Top Rabbi: Jewish law forbids renting homes to Arabs

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Top Yesha rabbi says Jewish law forbids renting houses to Arabs

By Nadav Shragai, Haaretz Correspondent

The chairman of the Yesha rabbinical council and chief rabbi of Kiryat Arba, Rabbi Dov Lior, on Wednesday issued a halakhic ruling stating that it is forbidden by Jewish law to employ Arabs or rent homes to them.

In an interview published by "Eretz Israel Shelanu" (Our Land of Israel), to be distributed this Saturday in various synagogues, Lior said that "since this is a matter of endangering souls, it is clear that it is completely forbidden to employ them and rent houses to them in Israel. Their employment is forbidden not only at yeshivas, but at factories, hotels and everywhere."

In the interview, Rabbi Lior backed the decision made by the administration of the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in Jerusalem to prevent Prime Minister Ehud Olmert from visiting the school after an Israeli Arab terrorist killed eight students there two weeks ago. "How can you welcome a man who acts against our holy Torah and continues to lead the people of Israel toward great danger?" Lior said.

"They were right in refusing to welcome such a personality in the yeshiva's halls," he added.

Rabbi Lior criticized the rabbis who didn't obey Rabbi Abraham Shapira, who instructed Jewish soldiers to refuse orders during the 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. "If the public had ignored the so-called "rabbis" who came out against these instructions, we may very well have spared the great pain [of the disengagement] from the people of Israel," he said.

Recently, several rabbis led by Rabbi Lior have issued a precedent setting halakhic ruling that Israel must shoot civilian populations in areas from whence attacks on Jewish communities originate.

Attorney Einat Horvitz from the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism said in response to the interview that "we view with great concern the wave of calls against Arabs since the terrible terror attack. This is an ever growing phenomenon of racist incitement that distorts Judaism and is also illegal. We call upon the attorney general to shake off his apathy and take action to enforce the laws that prohibit these calls."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/966208.html

This is this hardcore settler faction, a group of racist extremists who believe that all Palestinians should be driven out of the West Bank and Gaza, and be replaced with Jews. They are a minority among the total population of Israelis. But they have some very powerful friends, including some in very high places in the Israeli government.

Kiryat Arba, where this particular group is based, is an illegal settlement in the West Bank which has been home to various terrorists such as Baruch Goldstein. It's located on the edge of Hebron, a city of some 150,000 Palestinians.

Their spiritual leader is the fanatic Jewish-American Rabbi Meir Kahane, and many of the Hebron settlers are followers of the outlawed terrorist organization Kach.

A lot of Americans aren't really familiar with the whole settler issue, but it's a major factor in the hostilities of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. So a little background:

This problem began in 1968 (a year after the 1967 war in which Israel occupied Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza) when a group of about 60 disciples of the Rabbi Kook (I kid you not) led by Rabbi Moshe Levinger arrived in Hebron as "tourists." They booked rooms at a downtown hotel, and then simply refused to leave.

After some initial scuffles, the Israeli government moved the group to a military outpost on the edge of Hebron, built on confiscated Palestinian property, which eventually became known as the settlement of Kiryat Arba.

In 1979, under cover of night, a group of women and children from Kiryat Arba (led by Levinger's wife) sneaked into a hospital in downtown Hebron and also refused to leave. Over the next 30-some years, the settlers began to spread throughout much of Hebron's historic commercial business district.

With the open protection/support/enabling of the Israeli government, these illegal settlers now number about 800, and they have taken over a large part of the city. About 4000 Israeli troops are stationed in and around Hebron to protect these Jewish squatters, despite the fact that their presence is totally illegal.

As Kiryat Arba and its satellite settlements continue to expand, more and more Palestinian property in the area has been appropriated for "security reasons" -- which in reality means it's used for building more homes for settlers, transferring more agricultural land over into the control of settlers, and to build Jewish-only roads which service the settler communities and connect them to Israel "proper."

Settlers are allowed by the Israeli government and military to carry semi-automatic weapons, some of them provided by their own government, some provided by private supporters. Palestinians, of course, are not even legally permitted to own guns.

These settlers (and their children) regularly rampage through the Palestinian neighborhoods, assaulting people, shooting at homes, breaking into shops, vandalizing property, destroying crops and orchards, throwing garbage at residents, harrassing schoolchildren, and generally terrorizing the population. Few are ever arrested by Israeli police (who are threatened with lawsuits if they dare to try to enforce the law on these hooligans.) A few of these fanatics have been convicted of murdering Palestinian civilians, but were later pardoned by the Israeli government.

Hebron has become a major flashpoint in the conflict, and the increasing militancy of the settlers has been mirrored with an increasing militancy on the Palestinian side. Assaults and murders are committed frequently by both sides now. The ever-growing violence and hostilities have resulted in giving Hamas its strongest foothold in the West Bank (which has historically been mostly supportive of the secular Fatah party -- at least outside of Hebron.)

To "control" the tense situation, the Israeli army regularly places the Palestinian population under tight curfew, confining tens of thousands of people to their homes for days on end, while allowing the settlers to roam freely and continue their attacks.

Shamefully enough, many of these settler families are American -- a lot of them came straight out of Brooklyn, New York, and they get some of their funding from private supporters in America.

Just as shamefully, they have a lot of political influence on the Israeli government and its policies.

[Chica Yeyé 41]

####### sister --- that is effed up. It's like rental discrimination in the US. And yes, it happens: just did to a friend of mine who is African American - a professor nonetheless, who just likes going around looking sloppy. "uh oh, it has been rented..." my azz, I saw the sign out still just yesterday.

When does the hate and idiocy stop???

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

It's kind of like that.

But this is on a much broader scale, and it's even more outrageous.

This man is an illegal settler, living on land confiscated from Palestinians, deep in the heart of the Palestinian West Bank. No government in the world recognizes Israel's "right" to take this land as part of Israel, or to move its own civilian population into this territory (well, except the Israeli government, which dances between from tacitly allowing to openly supporting this activity as official state policy.)

This man is not only calling for wholesale discrimination against Israel's own Arab citizens. He is also calling for Israel's total appropriation of the West Bank and Gaza (which is absolutely illegal under international law) and the expulsion of the Palestinians who live there.

The settlers in Hebron and Kiryat Arba are not the largest groups in the West Bank, but they are some of the most fanatic extremists of all.

And they have continued to receive the Israeli government's support -- the illegal settlements receive government funding, government services, and military protection.

Many (if not most) Israelis find the ideology and the behavior of the settlers to be completely repugnant. Many (if not most) Israelis consider their own government's complicity in facilitating the settler movement to be a major threat to the security of the Israeli state.

But the settler movement is entrenched into the highest levels of the Israeli government, and their demands have been institutionalized into official policy.

Postcards from Hebron:

[GaryC 7]

Is this like Saudi Arabia not letting anyone that ever visited Israel into their country? If they look in your passport and see an entry stamp from Israel you can't come in. I used to work for a company that sold industrial machines. We were going to sell a mill to a Saudi oil company. They sent a representative over before we shipped it. The guy took the machine apart looking for anything that was made in Israel. If even one IC chip on one board was made in Israel the machine would have been rejected. How effed up is that? This ####### works both ways you know.

Edited March 21, 2008 by GaryC

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Is this like Saudi Arabia not letting anyone that ever visited Israel into their country? If they look in your passport and see an entry stamp from Israel you can't come in. I used to work for a company that sold industrial machines. We were going to sell a mill to a Saudi oil company. They sent a representative over before we shipped it. The guy took the machine apart looking for anything that was made in Israel. If even one IC chip on one board was made in Israel the machine would have been rejected. How effed up is that? This ####### works both ways you know.

Well no, it's not comparable to Saudi Arabia's policies at all, and I'm surprised that you would even consider that it might be comparable.

Saudi Arabia has the absolute right to decide who and what it wants to allow into its country. I don't agree with its reasoning, but that's its internal business.

The situation with Israel is entirely different -- it is illegally occupying territory and moving its own civilian population into that land.

As far as the rabbi in the story, he is publicly calling for Israelis to discriminate against, even attack, Israel's own Arab citizens, as well calling for the state to expel Palestinians from non-Israeli territory and appropriate that land into the State of Israel.

Can't you see the difference ?

It seems that sometimes, some people have a tendency to perceive all Arabs and all Arab countries as one single entity, whether they are Israeli Arabs, West Bank or Gaza Palestinians, Saudis, Iraqis or whatever.

[GaryC 7]

Is this like Saudi Arabia not letting anyone that ever visited Israel into their country? If they look in your passport and see an entry stamp from Israel you can't come in. I used to work for a company that sold industrial machines. We were going to sell a mill to a Saudi oil company. They sent a representative over before we shipped it. The guy took the machine apart looking for anything that was made in Israel. If even one IC chip on one board was made in Israel the machine would have been rejected. How effed up is that? This ####### works both ways you know.

Well no, it's not comparable to Saudi Arabia's policies at all, and I'm surprised that you would even consider that it might be comparable.

Saudi Arabia has the absolute right to decide who and what it wants to allow into its country. I don't agree with its reasoning, but that's its internal business.

The situation with Israel is entirely different -- it is illegally occupying territory and moving its own civilian population into that land.

As far as the rabbi in the story, he is publicly calling for Israelis to discriminate against, even attack, Israel's own Arab citizens, as well calling for the state to expel Palestinians from non-Israeli territory and appropriate that land into the State of Israel.

Can't you see the difference ?

It seems that sometimes, some people have a tendency to perceive all Arabs and all Arab countries as one single entity, whether they are Israeli Arabs, West Bank or Gaza Palestinians, Saudis, Iraqis or whatever.

No, I don't see the difference. Racial hatred is racial hatred. One sides hate breeds the other sides hate. It's a never ending circle.

As far as the OP goes, the Israelites could be perceived as protecting themselves from a group (the terrorists) that may try to infiltrate and cause harm. Since they can't tell the good guys from the bad they exclude everyone.

[AlHayatZween 2]

Well... maybe...

except Saudi is not appropriating the land of another country/people in open disregard of decades-old international law and then not giving the original occupants employment or housing.

(Please, don't think i'm advocating Saudi... with all it's human rights violations, etc... that's a whole different set of atrocities!)

i'm just saying that what this article relates something a little different.

hz

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Go Israel!!!!!

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

No, I don't see the difference. Racial hatred is racial hatred. One sides hate breeds the other sides hate. It's a never ending circle.

As far as the OP goes, the Israelites could be perceived as protecting themselves from a group (the terrorists) that may try to infiltrate and cause harm. Since they can't tell the good guys from the bad they exclude everyone.

You are confusing two separate issues.

In fact, Saudi Arabia has the absolute right to exclude anyone from visiting their country, or any product from entering their country. So does Israel. And I think you've somehow overlooked the fact that Israel certainly does refuse to allow *many* people of Arab origin from entering Israel. We may not agree with their policies about which foreign visitors or which foreign products are allowed in, but that is a state's own right to determine.

But neither Israel nor Saudi Arabia have the right to illegally occupy someone else's land, to expel those people from their property, and to transfer their own civilian population into that same land.

Also, under Israel's own laws, Israelis do not have the *right* to incite violence against Israel's own minority ethnic groups -- and Israeli Arabs make up 20% of Israel's population.

Are you really advocating the idea that all Arabs are somehow mutually responsible for and interchangeably punishable for the non-favorable immigration or trade policies of one (or even several) Arab governments ? Are you really advocating the idea that it's acceptable to collectively punish or violate the rights of any or all Arabs -- including their rights to their own property -- because of the actions of small groups of terrorists ?

Somehow, I don't think you'd be advocating or making excuses for similar types of punitive actions against against Jews anywhere in the world -- the appropriation of their property, or expelling them from their homes -- simply because of the illegal actions of certain Israelis, or of the Israeli state, including terrorism.

Or would you ?

[panamania79 2]

Top Yesha rabbi says Jewish law forbids renting houses to Arabs

By Nadav Shragai, Haaretz Correspondent

The chairman of the Yesha rabbinical council and chief rabbi of Kiryat Arba, Rabbi Dov Lior, on Wednesday issued a halakhic ruling stating that it is forbidden by Jewish law to employ Arabs or rent homes to them.

In an interview published by "Eretz Israel Shelanu" (Our Land of Israel), to be distributed this Saturday in various synagogues, Lior said that "since this is a matter of endangering souls, it is clear that it is completely forbidden to employ them and rent houses to them in Israel. Their employment is forbidden not only at yeshivas, but at factories, hotels and everywhere."

In the interview, Rabbi Lior backed the decision made by the administration of the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in Jerusalem to prevent Prime Minister Ehud Olmert from visiting the school after an Israeli Arab terrorist killed eight students there two weeks ago. "How can you welcome a man who acts against our holy Torah and continues to lead the people of Israel toward great danger?" Lior said.

"They were right in refusing to welcome such a personality in the yeshiva's halls," he added.

Rabbi Lior criticized the rabbis who didn't obey Rabbi Abraham Shapira, who instructed Jewish soldiers to refuse orders during the 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. "If the public had ignored the so-called "rabbis" who came out against these instructions, we may very well have spared the great pain [of the disengagement] from the people of Israel," he said.

Recently, several rabbis led by Rabbi Lior have issued a precedent setting halakhic ruling that Israel must shoot civilian populations in areas from whence attacks on Jewish communities originate.

Attorney Einat Horvitz from the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism said in response to the interview that "we view with great concern the wave of calls against Arabs since the terrible terror attack. This is an ever growing phenomenon of racist incitement that distorts Judaism and is also illegal. We call upon the attorney general to shake off his apathy and take action to enforce the laws that prohibit these calls."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/966208.html

This is this hardcore settler faction, a group of racist extremists who believe that all Palestinians should be driven out of the West Bank and Gaza, and be replaced with Jews. They are a minority among the total population of Israelis. But they have some very powerful friends, including some in very high places in the Israeli government.

Kiryat Arba, where this particular group is based, is an illegal settlement in the West Bank which has been home to various terrorists such as Baruch Goldstein. It's located on the edge of Hebron, a city of some 150,000 Palestinians.

Their spiritual leader is the fanatic Jewish-American Rabbi Meir Kahane, and many of the Hebron settlers are followers of the outlawed terrorist organization Kach.

A lot of Americans aren't really familiar with the whole settler issue, but it's a major factor in the hostilities of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. So a little background:

This problem began in 1968 (a year after the 1967 war in which Israel occupied Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza) when a group of about 60 disciples of the Rabbi Kook (I kid you not) led by Rabbi Moshe Levinger arrived in Hebron as "tourists." They booked rooms at a downtown hotel, and then simply refused to leave.

After some initial scuffles, the Israeli government moved the group to a military outpost on the edge of Hebron, built on confiscated Palestinian property, which eventually became known as the settlement of Kiryat Arba.

In 1979, under cover of night, a group of women and children from Kiryat Arba (led by Levinger's wife) sneaked into a hospital in downtown Hebron and also refused to leave. Over the next 30-some years, the settlers began to spread throughout much of Hebron's historic commercial business district.

With the open protection/support/enabling of the Israeli government, these illegal settlers now number about 800, and they have taken over a large part of the city. About 4000 Israeli troops are stationed in and around Hebron to protect these Jewish squatters, despite the fact that their presence is totally illegal.

As Kiryat Arba and its satellite settlements continue to expand, more and more Palestinian property in the area has been appropriated for "security reasons" -- which in reality means it's used for building more homes for settlers, transferring more agricultural land over into the control of settlers, and to build Jewish-only roads which service the settler communities and connect them to Israel "proper."

Settlers are allowed by the Israeli government and military to carry semi-automatic weapons, some of them provided by their own government, some provided by private supporters. Palestinians, of course, are not even legally permitted to own guns.

These settlers (and their children) regularly rampage through the Palestinian neighborhoods, assaulting people, shooting at homes, breaking into shops, vandalizing property, destroying crops and orchards, throwing garbage at residents, harrassing schoolchildren, and generally terrorizing the population. Few are ever arrested by Israeli police (who are threatened with lawsuits if they dare to try to enforce the law on these hooligans.) A few of these fanatics have been convicted of murdering Palestinian civilians, but were later pardoned by the Israeli government.

Hebron has become a major flashpoint in the conflict, and the increasing militancy of the settlers has been mirrored with an increasing militancy on the Palestinian side. Assaults and murders are committed frequently by both sides now. The ever-growing violence and hostilities have resulted in giving Hamas its strongest foothold in the West Bank (which has historically been mostly supportive of the secular Fatah party -- at least outside of Hebron.)

To "control" the tense situation, the Israeli army regularly places the Palestinian population under tight curfew, confining tens of thousands of people to their homes for days on end, while allowing the settlers to roam freely and continue their attacks.

Shamefully enough, many of these settler families are American -- a lot of them came straight out of Brooklyn, New York, and they get some of their funding from private supporters in America.

Just as shamefully, they have a lot of political influence on the Israeli government and its policies.

That is discrimination as well as ridiculous.

[natty bumppo 297]

In fact, Saudi Arabia has the absolute right to exclude anyone from visiting their country, or any product from entering their country. So does Israel.

Does this mean ... the US can do the same in regards to illegals .....

[AlHayatZween 2]

And I think you've somehow overlooked the fact that Israel certainly does refuse to allow *many* people of Arab origin from entering Israel.

Good point, WOM. i have been given ####### at the airport in Tel Aviv and i am an American with a "suspicious last name".

[almaty 19]

interesting information

[mawilson 2,133]

And I think you've somehow overlooked the fact that Israel certainly does refuse to allow *many* people of Arab origin from entering Israel.

Good point, WOM. i have been given ####### at the airport in Tel Aviv and i am an American with a "suspicious last name".

Doesn't mean anything. I had the same problem at the airport in Tel Aviv and I have an English last name.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

In fact, Saudi Arabia has the absolute right to exclude anyone from visiting their country, or any product from entering their country. So does Israel.

Does this mean ... the US can do the same in regards to illegals .....

Certainly the U.S. has the right to enforce its own laws regarding immigration and foreign trade, according to its own legal parameters.