Question

Hello Rabbi Michael,
Thank you very much for your enlightening words.
Since this isn’t the topic of the last column (486), and since this is an important issue, I’m raising here the direction I’m taking בעקבות your remarks, your response, and my continued clarification of the matter (if you think this isn’t the right place, we can continue in the comments to the column).
A quote from the column: “This is a pragmatic Arab party (Ra'am).”
This requires further examination; see:
A. Dr. Mordechai Kedar on the failed experiment with Ra'am
https://youtu.be/RL_yXzwSvVU
B. The Wikipedia entries:
* “The Muslim Brotherhood” (as is known, Ra'am is the “southern branch” of the movement in Israel).
* “Hamas” (regarding its founding)
* “Taqiyya”
Your response:
As part of researching the sources, I suggest you look at the platform of Smotrich and the Haredim: among other things, they support stoning Sabbath desecrators and adulterers, lowering heretics into a pit and not raising them out, killing Amalekite babies, and more and more.
It’s also worth checking the Christian platform, according to which one should turn the other cheek — so who talked about murder and persecution in the name of Christianity?
Wiseguys who quote platforms simply don’t understand what they’re talking about. Movements and groups are not judged by their platforms but by their practice. Judaism, Christianity, and Ra'am alike.
My response:
Regarding the relationship between platform and practice, it is indeed important to examine this with respect to the Haredim and their parties, and with respect to Religious Zionism and its parties. In order not to scatter the discussion, I’ll return to the matter of Ra'am, as a daughter movement of the Islamic movement and Arab tradition:
Here it is worth becoming familiar with the reality of “taqiyya” (or “taqiya”) in Muslim tradition in general, and all the more so among the Muslim Brotherhood.
As for Muslim culture, see the entry on Muhammad’s “Hudaybiyyah Agreement.” And see its implementation by Arafat, may his name be erased, in the Oslo Accords and the Second Intifada, when somehow we and the world bought the lies and awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize.
As for the Muslim Brotherhood, this has always been their declared and implemented way: as part of “taqiyya,” to begin with “civil jihad” — to establish a civilian network of Muslim education, charity, and benevolence, and from there to work toward the dream of rule by a Muslim caliphate in the most effective way.
So too with Hamas, which Ahmad Yassin, may his name be erased, also built as a popular organization of charity and benevolence, and we granted it legitimacy until it grew stronger and “turned” on us in a terrorist uprising.
The signs that this is how Ra'am operates are clear. I will bring only two from the Arabic sources, where one has to understand their intent.
Here are the words of Mansour Abbas in Arabic:
https://youtu.be/SzjnlpZhd54
And here are the words of the Arab journalist Muhammad Majadele in an interview, saying that Smotrich is right regarding Ra'am’s internal language:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E_lgRMxWQAEllUe?format=jpg&name=large
https://www.inn.co.il/news/505143