While I did not read the whole mess, I did read the summary published by the rabbis who wrote it. It has the same relation to the Bible as Mein Kampf to a history of WWI.

The authors call for the murder of non-Jewish children – *particularly* gentile children – “if there is good reason to think they may harm us in the future”. And they further say that, when killing a gentile who does not observe the 7 “Laws of the Sons of Noah”, you just have to mean to kill him for that offense. Since no one obeys all them, this is basically open season on gentiles.

Now, you can say that the reasoning of the rabbis is flawed, that what they say is contrary to centuries of Halachic decisions, and that they are raving, mad dogs whose books ought to be burned – more sane rabbis have said all of the above. But to compare this to academic freedom is bullshit, and the people who use this excuse generally know it’s bullshit. Now it’s your turn to tell us whether you’re a willful distorter of the facts or a useful idiot.

And a secular Israel cannot come about without interfering with the other religions in place, not only in Israel but in the surrounding countries as well simply because you can’t change the system “just for the Jews”.
You can institutionalize civil marriage all you want, it will not work in the case of a Christian marrying a Muslim, a Shia marrying a Sunni, a Copt marrying a Jew.
As to the present issue, the real reason for the brouhaha and rabbis scandals is that they are on a protest campaign. Their complaint is that they have lesser rights than University scholars before the law in terms of free speech. They prove it by a making crazy statements that get them arrested, while others can incite all they please and nothing ever happens to them.
About what was really said in that book, nobody really knows. He says it’s just a quote from the Bible, not his opinion, others say it’s incitement. I haven’t read the book and I am prepared to bet neither has Yossi Gurvitz.

When a higher being is invoked (or a higher book) that is supposed to order lives beyond the claim of secular laws and the people making the claim have power that the non-religious are afraid to limit (or do so haltingly and with obsequiousness) then there is only more trouble ahead.

The U.S. has plenty of religious extremists but they are kept in their place by being prevented from running religious political parties.

My sense is that the Palestinians need only stand by and watch to see the colossus crumble without any external push either from internal divisions or from disgusted immigration. Ben Gurion’s big mistake – his concession to the religious will do the trick as all those intrepid secular pioneer kibbutzim are long forgotten and Israel is fully emergent as something those folks never envisioned.

Most fantastic of all is the continuing belief by many Americans (who think the evening news is really the news) that the US and Israel are just two peas in a pod.

Separation of church and state – one thing that we got right!

To the religious it’s only fitting to quote a religious man, Oliver Cromwell speaking to a religious body in 1650: “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.”