Comments on: Rabbi Hartman: Targeted killings are Tikkun Olam

By: Angela White

Angela White — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 06:18:07 +0000

The term “targeted killing” is no more or less than spin for murder.

What happened to treating humans with respect because they are made in God’s image? What happened to the rule of law?

Surely, blowing up a newborn and her sleeping mother in a drone attack meant to kill terrorists cannot be called a mitzvah! And if we applaud such actions, what have we become?

By: Henry Lowi

Henry Lowi — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 14:27:34 +0000

“tikkun olam, repairing the world” is the flavor of the day for most North American synagogues and Jewish organizations.
By giving murder the legitimacy of “tikkun olam”, by legitimizing a tactic of war as “tikkun olam”, Rabbi Hartman will help diorient and confuse many honest and decent Jewish youth and others. These thoughtful, well-meaning Jewish people will re-consider their commitment to the mantras of the Jewish elite, and will challenge the premises of Zionism, its murderous reality, and its “liberal” justifications. I hope Rabbi Hartman keeps up the good work. The polarization in the Jewish community, along pro-Zionist and anti-Zionist lines, will proceed apace. Palestine solidarity will be enriched.

By: Piotr Berman

Piotr Berman — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 10:23:47 +0000

XYZ: sorry, the words that puzzled you were the beginning of the quote from the report of Shalom Hartman Institute. What constitutes “identity” and “Jewish identity” I do not really know.

In the context, it seems to me that “Jewish identity” that Hartman report is talking about is propensity to issue and obey orders that can be in variance with “universalist values” but consistent with ethnocentric values, like killing possible enemies as a precaution. Otherwise, why the military should worry about “identity” as opposed to “loyalty”.

By: sh

sh — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 08:53:52 +0000

“For most Israeli Jews there is a GROWING Jewish identity”
.
XYZ, the Jewish identity you claim is growing in Israel isn’t Jewish at all. What is Jewish is what Jewish parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and their parents, grandparents, etc. saw as Jewish. The identity you’re claiming is Jewish is a new one that has grown up here in Israel and been disseminated all over the Jewish world, currently personified in the odious likes of Yaakov Fauci, the Kalashnikover Rebbe.
.
Some Jews still vaguely remember being brought up to use heads not fists in an argument, and to respect the people amongst whom they live in the shape of – ooh, just to pick another anachronism – loving your neighbor as yourself. That was Jewish. Your “returnees” remember nothing and cherry pick from the Talmud with help from authorities like Hartman, in order to justify criminal abominations the motivations for which are purely nationalistic. Therein lies their appeal to our politicos and their electorates. Kashering abominations, executing them with modern tools that save those permitting themselves conduct that their own sages replaced with more socially beneficial habits like charity a millennium or two ago, from dirtying their shirts.

By: XYZ

XYZ — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 06:05:40 +0000

Piotr Berman-
Your claim that “there is a growing alienation of Israel’s people from their Jewish identity” is an overgeneralization. For most Israeli Jews there is a GROWING Jewish identity. It is true that among young people whose parents were part of what people often call “the Beautiful Israel”, i.e. the Zionist/Israeli Establishment, there is a declining Jewish/Zionist identity, but there is also a large-scale renewed interest in Judaism and Jewish culture among those who were not raised in a religious environment. Also, Israeli Jews generally feel a strong attachment to world Jewry as well.

By: Piotr Berman

Piotr Berman — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 03:56:57 +0000

Of course Hartman is not messianic. He is a pure sophist, a theologian who betrays no trace of actually believing in God but who nevertheless applies theology to augment statist ideology of Israel.

American Enterprise Institute has a theology department to justify libertarian economics and wars. Hartman seems similar. Cute marketing and fat salary, I presume. Putting together “Tikun Olam” and assassinations is intellectual rape. Basically, State is worshiped as Good and Wise, and thus given automatic trust that it kills, steals, harrasses and tortures always for a Good Reason.

It is pseudo-religion in service of tribal self-congratulation and vilification.

There was a question discussed very recently: does Israel have a right to security? Here Hartman proves that the right to security entails a very flexible license to kill, so I would also hesitate to affirm such a “law to”. The most sinister institutions of XX century had “security” in their names.

By: Jazzy

Jazzy — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 03:41:22 +0000

Noam W: not trying to sound too paternalistic or anything, but if you’re actually a Zionist you’re being a sucker by engaging in respectful discourse with Noam S about things like this. You’re being HAD. Everything he writes is an outgrowth of anti-Zionist dogma, not an honest presentation of the issue at hand. He wraps his ideology in topical discussions, but its not what he really wants to say (e.g. “messianic” thinking of Hartman is NOT an honest statement about what Hartman said, just a coded denial of Israel’s legitimacy – i.e. you have to be “messianic” (morally repugnant) to agree that Israel has a right to defend itself).

By: Jazzy

Jazzy — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 02:18:30 +0000

Noam W: You missed the point, which WASN’T legal. Leaving aside the LEGAL answer to the question which, according to you, actually leads to ABSURD results (yes, why doesn’t the IDF just invade Gaza to arrest the guy, I mean really why not???) – my point what about Noam’s characterization of Hartman’s state of mind, you know, SCIENTER. When the guy talks about insuring a safer FUTURE for ‘out citizens’, he’s not being very MESSIANIC is he? Like in his piece about Adnan, Noam is NOT VERY CLEVERLY inserting an anti-Zionist assertion, as subtext, into discussion of a COLLATERAL issue. Of course, any SECULAR person could made the same judgment as Hartman, for the same practical reasons, but when “Tikkun Olam”, a pretty bland term (as its been appropriated by Reform Judaism and is now used), is morphed, exaggerated and distorted, into a “religious-messianic nationalism.” GIVE ME A BREAK. The subtext = there can never be any justification in JEWISH MORALITY (of even the most pragmatic, least messianic kind) for Israel to have a legitimate claim to self-defense. Basically just trite anti-Zionist garbage wrapped up in discussion of a collateral issue. Lameness on a high order.

By: Piotr Berman

Piotr Berman — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 23:16:25 +0000

I uploaded the report of Shalom Hartman Institute. Very pretty. Nothing mars the upbeat text and tasteful illustration. Non-Jews appear in one sentence, on a conference that brought together theologians “Jewish, Christian and Muslim” to Jerusalem. There is a map that shows locations of schools that interract with the institute in a cream-colored territory without any name (seem to be the postulated territory of 1SS plus Golan). I think they try to hide that none of these schools is in a settlement.

The program is quitessential “Zionist liberal”, actually, it takes some time to see that it is somewhat Zionist rather than simply “Jewish identity”. But here it is, it is hard to imagine a research program without military applications:

One of the most severe existential threats to Israel as a Jewish State is the growing alienation of its people from their Jewish identity. Recognizing that Israel’s military elite are uniquely positioned to shape the guiding principles of the nation, the IDF has made Jewish identity education a critical priority—and has selected Lev Aharon, the Institute’s Jewish identity education initiative for military officers, as its program of choice. Providing more than 1,000 IDF senior officers with pluralistic Israeli-Jewish identity training each year, the program instills in Majors, Lieutenant-Colonels and Colonels a mission that is not defined by external threats, but instead arises from the keystone values of Jewish culture, heritage and history.

By: John Yorke

John Yorke — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 21:17:29 +0000

Again, the main consideration here never comes under serious discussion.
Everyone is concentrating on the minutiae, the finer points of detail. Is this procedure legal, moral, helpful? Has it become a hindrance in any way or can it be an assist in bringing about some settlement of a dispute that’s now successfully spanned more than six decades?

The answer is that no one really knows but it’s a fair bet that so negative a policy as ‘targeted killing’ does not augur well for future discussions about peace and reconciliation.

And therein lies the problem. How are any viable peace talks ever going to take off if a single bullet, from either side, can wreck in an instant what may have taken many months of patient preparation and careful negotiations to bring about?

It’s little wonder then that Israelis and Palestinians have been engaged in this business for so long. There is simply no chance of a meaningful dialogue or progress if just one act of violence can so easily disrupt whatever attempts are being made to end their conflict.

And, since acts of violence are so very prolific in this region, what are the chances of a real and enduring peace ever taking hold? Virtually none.

Unless everyone is prepared to deal with the basic problem at a much more fundamental level, the present status quo will remain undisturbed until some final cataclysm comes along to end the matter once and for all. I really think it would be best if that didn’t happen; it sounds very much like something we would all wish to avoid.

So, how do we avoid it?

’If the mountain will not come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain.’ Or, as I would have it; http://yorketowers.blogspot.com