ISRAELI GOVERNMENT RESPONDS TO BIDEN'S SOTU SPEECH

You might recall that last week in his State of the Union Speech, President Biden came down strongly in favor of the two-state solution in regards to the Gaza War. He said Israeli government participation was required and intimated then and since that the failure of the Israeli government to get on board would affect US-Israel relations going forward. Biden also asked the Israelis not to invade Rafah in Gaza.

Nitwityahoo’s response last Friday was effectively to give Biden “the finger” in public, stating that he would soon order the IDF to invade Rafah.

It turns out, Nitwit wasn’t the only member of the Israeli Far Right with a response to the speech.

The following is cross-posted from Mehdi Hasan’s Monday Memo from his new Stubstack site Zeteo (which I recommend you subscribe to):

Imagine the scene. A prominent Muslim cleric, funded by the government of a Muslim-majority country, goes in front of the cameras and calls for the killing of all Israelis. When asked, “Babies too?” he answers, “The same thing. You can’t be clever with the Quran.”

What do you think the reaction inside of Israel would be? How about the response from the West and especially from Western media?

Outrage? Condemnation? Endless discussions about Islamic extremism, Quranic incitement, and the need for religious reform?

But what if I told you that the cleric isn’t a Muslim but actually… a far-right Israeli Jew? And the call for genocidal violence isn’t against Israelis but against Palestinians in Gaza?

Last week, the head of the Shirat Moshe Hesder Yeshiva in Jaffa Rabbi Eliyahu Mali said at a yeshiva conference that the entire Gazan population should be killed, claiming that “there are no innocents.”

When asked, “Babies too?” Mali replied, “The same thing. You can’t be clever with the Torah.”

“The message in this is very clear, if you will not kill them - they will kill you," he declared at the conference and on camera. “Today's terrorists are the children of the previous operation that you kept alive, and the women are actually the ones who create the terrorists.”

The rabbi claimed that there was no difference between "the 18, 16, 20, 30-year-old man holding a weapon at you” and the children in Gaza because, he argued, they are the “future generation” of terrorists. “Today he is a baby, today he is a child, tomorrow he is a fighter. Today's 18-year-old terrorists were eight-year-old children ten years ago in the previous operation.”

Shocking, right? But it gets worse. Mali is not some random or fringe rabbi. He is one of the most senior Israeli religious figures in the city of Jaffa and his students go on to serve in the Israeli military. “He’s not just head of a yeshiva; he’s head of a hesder yeshiva,” wrote former State Department adviser Barnett Rubin on Twitter. “Many yeshiva students do not serve in the military, but hesder yeshivas combine Torah study with military service. So young military recruits are being taught that genocide is a religious duty.” (That endless stream of TikTok videos from sociopathic Israeli soldiers in Gaza filming themselves committing war crimes now makes a lot more sense, doesn’t it?)

But wait, there’s more! Mali’s yeshiva received the equivalent of around $800,000 in subsidies from the Israeli government last year – the same year in which Israel received at least $3.8 billion from the United States in economic and military aid. Mali’s yeshiva also receives tax-deductible donations via a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in the United States called the Central Fund of Israel. 

So if you are an American taxpayer reading this post then, congratulations, you are helping fund this preacher of hate and terror.

The inconvenient truth for Israel’s liberal defenders, in the United States, the UK, and beyond, is that Mali is far from an isolated case. Anti-Palestinian racists and religious extremists dominate Israeli politics; the likes of Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich are senior members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. Genocidal and fascistic sentiments have been spreading across vast swaths of Israeli society for many years now. Polls suggest ordinary Israelis not only back this murderous assault on Gaza, which has led to more than 30,000 Palestinian deaths, but aren’t too bothered by the suffering of the civilian population and want more firepower to be used against the strip. Last week, CNN’s Clarissa Ward interviewed a group of unhinged Israeli protesters who are physically blocking humanitarian aid from reaching the children of Gaza. “Not a single loaf of bread should go there ’til our hostages are coming back,” one of them told Ward.

Meanwhile, the Israeli government has been silent in the wake of Mali’s rabid comments while the rabbi himself has tried to deflect criticism by pointing to the one portion of his speech where he insisted Israeli soldiers should obey the orders of their superiors. (To her credit, Merav Michaeli, the head of Israel's opposition Labor Party, has called for Mali to be fired from his post).

To reiterate: this is an Israeli government-funded, hate-preaching, genocide-inciting rabbi in Jaffa who has helped educate and train some of the Israeli soldiers who are now fighting in Gaza. His organization remains eligible for tax-deductible donations from the United States. 

And, as Mehdi points out, not one article about these events in any major American newspaper or TV news.

You can click on any of the hyperlinks to see the original material referenced in the post.

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