Q&A: How should one relate to them? And to the values they represent?
How should one relate to them? And to the values they represent?
Question
I saw rabbis who published heart-wrenching cries over a group of youths [suspected?] of stoning Arab cars. Which of course involves attempted murder. The police called on them to stop. And instead of stopping like any decent person, with the most basic fear of the authorities, they chose to… flee.
During their flight from the representatives of law and order, their car overturned and one of the passengers died.
[It may be that the reason it overturned was that the police car rammed their vehicle, and it may be unrelated, and that in their wild escape they simply lost control; the matter is under investigation] a0
Instead of calling for soul-searching over an act of attempted murder, trying to stone any Arab passerby… or at the very least criticizing the flight from the police, certain rabbis chose to direct their criticism דווקא at the Israel Police…
And not only that. For over a week now, every night people have been going out on a rampage under the innocent title of a "demonstration," in which they throw stones and even rocks at Israeli policemen and policewomen.
Again, a severe act of attempted murder. And I do not hear those same rabbis condemning these vile acts.
How should any decent person from now on relate to those rabbis and to what they say?
There is no condemnation whatsoever of acts of attempted murder. [At any rate, nothing was published publicly.] And there is reason to think that their students, or their ideological students, are partners in these vile acts, or at the very least part of the environment that produces justification for such acts.
And yet it is precisely against policemen and policewomen without whom people would swallow one another alive that they level grave accusations. And they demand a supreme moral standard that is not only impossible in reality, but that these rabbis themselves do not come close at all to the same standard they demand that the police follow…
[And moreover, in their weekend newspapers they called the result of the accident "murder"… no less… while about the stoning and lynch attempts they carry out against Israeli policemen and policewomen, not a word of criticism, at least not in public.] a0
How should one relate to them and to their statements and to the level of values [?] they represent.
Answer
I am not familiar with the details of the case, but from a general impression it seems to me that your description is correct. I really do think there is a serious problem here of a double standard toward Jewish and Arab attackers. On the other hand, descriptions coming out of the police are not very reliable in my eyes neither regarding Jews nor regarding Arabs. The police generally take care to cover themselves and do not really investigate such cases honestly, and so their reports do not inspire much trust in me. In order to form a position, one has to check the facts, and I assume that those rabbis you describe (I have not heard and do not know of them) did not do that, if only because they have no tools to do so. And certainly not the demonstrators who go out en masse to street lynchings. It is an incited mob, and it is a shame that there are rabbis (if there are such) who cooperate with this.
But as for your question of how to relate to their statements, I do not see room for that, because one should not relate to any persons statement based on what he is, but on its own merits. If they make correct statements, they should be accepted, and if not, then not. Regardless of their conduct.
Discussion on Answer
Blessed be He that I was right about the chase and the escape from the arm of the law.
How can one understand the ignoring of the stoning of Israeli policemen and policewomen night after night, and no one says a word?
With God's help, 19 Tevet 5781
The police version is full of contradictions. At first they denied that the police car rammed the youths' car and claimed… Only after they managed to photograph the impact marks, and an accident investigator's report was issued determining that the police car rammed the youths' car, did they begin (after three days…) to investigate the officers as well.
The investigation of the ramming officers was just for show, carried out by another police unit whose commander announced in advance that the officers under investigation were "the salt of the earth." When Ahuvia's fianc e9e came to the Tel Aviv major-crimes unit to collect the deceased's tefillin, they put her through three hours of "questioning," in which they said about her deceased fianc e9 that he was a "thug" and a bad person and so on.
So can one rely on such an investigation, conducted out of hatred for the victim and sympathy for the perpetrator, while labeling him in advance as "the salt of the earth"? District Court Judge Zion Kapah, who on Friday ordered the release of the last detainee to house arrest, noted in his ruling that the suspicions against him were not at a high level.
This time the call to investigate police conduct came from a broad consensus of rabbis from Religious Zionism, including "statists" and "liberals." They simply understood that there had been police rampage here that requires an external objective investigation.
Regards,
S. Tz. Levinger, Kochav HaShahar
A woman from Kochav HaShahar who was driving on the road also encountered the civilian car in which the undercover officers were traveling. It was driving wildly, and she thought they were terrorists, and only by a miracle did they not hit her too. There is reason to think that the youths as well feared that the car chasing them was a terrorist vehicle, and therefore fled toward the military base at Baal Hatzor.
Paragraph 1, line 2
… and claimed that the youths' car overturned because the driver lost control. Only after…
In most of the demonstrations they are not beating police officers. I recommend that you see things in reality and not only in the media, which is well known for its objectivity and its love for the hilltop youth. The fact is that the car was civilian, so why would the youths stop, and that Ahuvia was stuck under the car for a long time. This requires an urgent investigation that will not be carried out by the corrupt police. (It may be that it really was the youths' fault, but the police are not a reliable source for checking that.) And does that contradict the fact that stoning Arabs is horrifying? I do not understand what the connection is. One can both not support the actions of violent hilltop youth and also be horrified by the police. Although I pray that every Arab who throws stones should receive the same tough treatment that the hilltop youth get.
With God's help, 20 Tevet 5781
It is worth bringing here the words of Rabbi Ohad Krakovar, the rabbi of Kochav HaShahar, in whose yeshiva Ahuvia of blessed memory studied.
In his article "Justice for Ahuvia Out of Love" (on the Arutz 7 website), Rabbi Krakovar explains that there is a more fundamental problem here than "police officers who, out of excessive zeal and breaking the law, rammed his car and caused his death." There is an atmosphere of baseless hatred.
"The officers in the patrol car would not have behaved this way toward any other population. Only a long campaign of delegitimization against the hilltop youth portraying them as terrorists and enemies of the state created the atmosphere that led the police to chase them as though they were dangerous enemies."
The officers who caused harm must be brought to justice, but that is not what will solve the problem. "The problem is the alienation and incitement that formed the background to the act," but following the inclination of the heart to return hatred for hatred does not bring repair but rather deepens the coldness and intensifies the problem, and therefore the rabbi concludes:
"There is only one way to heal hatred with love. There are no shortcuts… The protest over Ahuvia's death nothing could be more justified but it must be made precise, so that it brings repair and not damage. And it is obvious that even within it there is no place for hatred, physical violence, or even verbal violence, God forbid. Hatred is not repaired with hatred but with great love."
Accordingly, Rabbi Ohad Krakovar published guidelines for how the demonstration should be conducted (as quoted in the article: "Ahuvia Sandak's yeshiva head: There are demonstrations that are non-kosher," on the Srugim website). One must check in advance that the demonstration is approved, and even if violence against the police develops at the demonstration, one must flee from it as from fire. Violence and hatred breed violence and hatred on the other side and distance the broader public from identifying with the content of our struggle.
Regards,
S. Tz. Levinger, Kochav HaShahar
At any rate, testimonies from the field indicate that even at a demonstration approved by law, police violence was used against demonstrators even though they obeyed police instructions and did not leave the approved area. See Yehonatan Gotliv's article, "Even in the approved area: water cannons against children at right-wing demonstrations," on the Arutz 7 website.
So what is someone to do if he comes to demonstrate legally and encounters initiated violence מצד the police?
Regards,
S. Tz. L.
Rabbi, all of this is only in theory. In practice, today there are certain procedures, and the police did not comply with them. The question is whether police officers may be anarchists. It seems clearly not.
And there are quite a lot of ongoing cases in which police take the law into their own hands outside their role or authority. For example, regarding the issue of detainees in the public domain. But of course no one does anything about it.
In any case, it is pretty clear that there are too many things that stink about that "accident," starting with the initial denial and the change through at least three versions. The fact that they closed off the area for several hours even to Knesset members (which is illegal), that the evacuation took place much later, that the dead body remained at the scene for a long time, that the officers were only investigated many days later, and so on and so on… Clearly one cannot place much trust in an organization busy covering its own back.
I might add one more thing. When you see someone fleeing from the police, in my opinion it is appropriate to permit shooting in order to stop him, even if that endangers his life. There needs to be a clear norm that you do not run from a police officer when he orders you to stop. In the short term this may lead to casualties, but in the long term it will save quite a few lives, both on the nationalist level and on the criminal level. If people know that you do not run from the police, traffic accidents will be prevented, and future harm to life and property caused by those fugitives will be prevented. Sometimes a strict policy that costs lives in the short term saves lives overall in the bottom line (compare the Intifada).