The Toxic Roots Of Jewish Terror

The Toxic Roots Of Jewish Terror

The religious Zionist's denial to categorize Jewish terror as such fans the flames of terrorism in the name of Judaism and a Jewish state.

Avirama Golan

The longer the Duma arson suspects remain in custody, the greater the pressure from their friends and families on the Shin Bet security service’s Jewish division, to the point of reckless delegitimization of the state. That unruliness is perhaps to be expected, but its full dimensions bears examination.

The people who have the most trouble understanding this are members of the religious Zionist community, including rabbis in the settlements. Most members of this community, which of course cannot imagine itself supporting murder and violent acts, are shocked and terrified by any connection between it and the hard anarchist core of the “hilltop youth.” But in fact this community includes much broader and more complex groups of adults.

This misunderstanding requires clarification for a number of reasons, starting with the demand by spokesmen and supporters of Jewish terror that they be recognized as the pure, brave and just successors of Gush Emunim.

“What happened to the religious-national public?” Elyashiv Har-Shalom goads his parents’ generation in his blog. To his mind, that generation is indifferent to the arrests and interrogations.
“Where are their teachers? Where are all those who know full well the work of protest, the blocking of busy roads with sweeping song and faith in the justness of the path?”

Har-Shalom says his camp does not consist of “wild weeds,” but rather is the result of the great education at its core.

He accuses the founders, who raised their children on the heritage of the first settlements of Sebastia and Beit Hadassah in Hebron: “Your children, your next generation, the sons of your rabbis, have been in custody for weeks in the Shin Bet basements ... they are strong, don’t worry, they received a good education, but what about you?”

Rabbi Yossi Elitzur, a co-author of “The King’s Torah,” blasts the rabbis of Samaria for saying — (“out of fear of the master”) — after protesting the arrests, that they hoped the Duma murderers would be caught. Do they? Is it their hope that “these foes from the Shin Bet will manage to destroy lives and put Jews who could not remain silent in the face of bloodshed into prison for many years”?
Could anything be clearer? On Facebook pages with names like “We want a Jewish state” or “Back to the (Temple) Mount,” independent news bulletins such as “The Jewish Voice” and movements like Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburgh’s Derech Chaim, which has thousands of members, the calls are no less clear. Some are even more clear, such as the statement, “We do not know who did this and it is clear it was not the arrestees, but it was certainly a mitzvah (December 3, “We want a Jewish state”), and the choruses of Kahane Lives and Lehava.

The racism and the violence take various forms, but the idea is one: a pure state of Jewish law, a kingdom of faith at any price and right now. It is inconceivable that the religious Zionist public does not see the spring that feeds these toxic roots: from Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, who described the restraining order issued in 2013 barring Boaz Albert from the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar, where he lives, as an “order against the Zionism of God”; to Rabbi Dov Lior, who claimed during a visit in support of Albert that the Israeli government is restricting Jews as the British Mandate did and to Rabbi Eliezer Melamed (“the chutzpah of summoning rabbis for questioning”), “The King’s Torah,” “Baruch Hagever” and the like.

No doubt about it, these events are opening a chasm in the religious Zionist community, but the fear of betraying the “sector” and the panic over what is being revealed dictate silence and denial, which in turn empower the supporters of Jewish terror and crown them as the new leaders of the entire public. And woe to us, silence is an admission of guilt.

Thirty Bullets to Take Down a Teen With a Knife

Thirty Bullets to Take Down a Teen With a Knife

Raheeq Birawi’s very brief married life in the U.S. was intolerable. Is that why she took a knife and traveled to an Israeli checkpoint three days before her planned return to America?

Gideon Levy and Alex Levac

Did she want to die? Was she tired of her short married life, which began with a kitschy honeymoon and continued as a hell in San Francisco? Was she afraid to return to her husband in America, who, according to her mother, used drugs and beat her? Was Raheeq Birawi – a pretty 19-year-old from the town of Asira al-Shamaliya, near Nablus, a young woman from a poor family whose parents are separated – tired of her new life in the American golden cage? Is that why she took a shared taxi to the Tapuah checkpoint in order to end her life? And, above all, is it even important whether or not she wanted to die?

When someone tries to commit suicide, everywhere else in the world, including security forces, try to save him or her. In the occupied territories, however, the situation is reversed: There’s nobody like the Israel Defense Forces or the Border Police when it comes to helping Palestinians – mainly, Palestinian women – carry out their death plans. In the case of Raheeq Birawi, they were especially happy to do so: Border policemen fired over 30 bullets at her, one after another, to make sure 30 times over that her death wish would come true. Her story is not unique: A large percentage of the knife-wielding women killed by Israel in recent months at checkpoints and bus stops in the territories had a similar background and motives.

Asira al-Shamaliya is a hilly town. The home of the bereaved mother is a rented, one-story stone structure, with damp walls and rooms that are empty of almost any furniture. Here single mother Zahra Birawi lives in poverty, and here Raheeq grew up together with her five sisters and a brother. Their father, Shajia, a construction worker in Israel, separated from Zahra years ago and is remarried. He also lives in Asira.

Several Palestinian flags are now taped to the porch; a death notice was issued by the town council. Unusually, no organization has taken responsibility for the fate of this unfortunate shaheeda (martyr). Israel Air Force planes circled in the sky and made a deafening noise while we sat on the porch with Zahra, whose tears kept flowing. The contrast between the sophisticated jets in the air and the miserable situation here was egregious.

Dressed in blue, her face tired and grief-stricken, the bereaved mother is 47. When she shows us pictures of herself at her daughter’s wedding in San Francisco, just last March, it’s hard to recognize her. “Sadness changes one’s face,” said B’Tselem investigator Abed el-Karim Saadi, who accompanied us.

About three years earlier, A.G., a U.S. native whose family has its roots in East Jerusalem, and who owns a cell phone store in San Francisco, came to Asira to ask for Raheeq’s hand after their families agreed to the match, and they got engaged.

Early this year, mother and daughter traveled to California. First they spent a month in Sacramento with the groom’s family, and then they went to San Francisco for the marriage ceremony. The wedding album reveals a colorful picture of a different reality: the couple in their wedding finery, the happy mother of the bride, dressed up and elegant, dancing in a hotel banquet hall, a fairy-tale event.

Zahra says that at first she actually liked her daughter’s groom. After the wedding, she returned to Asira, while the young couple spent their honeymoon in Hawaii. But the honeymoon was very short-lived.

After they returned to California, Raheeq told her mother that her husband had changed drastically. Raheeq, whose name means “nectar,” became a battered woman. Her life became a hell, according to her mother. Her husband took back the gold jewelry he had given her for their wedding, selling it so he could buy drugs. Once she was even hospitalized, because of pills her husband gave her, according to Zahra.

Raheeq wanted to become a modern woman, and asked to learn to drive, but her husband forbade it. He is 34 years old and only recently did Zahra learn that he was previously married, perhaps even more than once. For his part, his mother, Raheeq’s mother-in-law, suspected that she was flirting with his brother, her brother-in-law. Raheeq was alone in her distress.

On August 21, about five months after the wedding, Raheeq returned to Asira, for her brother’s nuptials. Her mother says that she noticed black and blue marks on her face. When she questioned her, the situation became clear: Raheeq was afraid to return to her husband. Zahra phoned his family in the United States, but they claimed that Raheeq was inventing everything and that her husband hadn’t harmed her.

Zahra didn’t want to interfere, and didn’t try to tell her daughter what to do. “I gave my children freedom, without forcing my opinion on them,” she says when asked whether she tried to pressure Raheeq not to return to America. Raheeq decided in the end to return to her husband, with whom she had spoken only a few times during her trip home. In one conversation, he promised her that he would allow her to learn to drive, if only she would come back.

Raheeq was scheduled to return to San Francisco on Sunday, October 23, together with her mother, who planned to stay with her there for about a month. The husband’s family in America sent the tickets.

On October 19, the last day of her life, Raheeq woke up in her father’s home. She went out to the drugstore, and returned to her mother’s house and told her she was going to Ramallah to do some shopping for the trip and to get some documents. Raheeq traveled by shared taxi from Asira to Nablus, where she boarded another minibus to Ramallah.

The mother’s face is full of tears. She sighs: “May God punish the wicked.”

At about 11 A.M., Zahra’s neighbor, who works in Palestinian intelligence, called and asked whether the Palestinian police had come to her house. When Zahra, perplexed, wondered why he was asking that, what the problem was – the neighbor quickly hung up. Minutes later Shajia, her estranged husband, called from his place of work in Taibeh and said his wife had told him that she heard that something bad had happened to Raheeq.

He said that his new wife had tried to call Raheeq, and an unfamiliar voice answered her. Shajia asked Zahra to contact the Israeli-Palestinian coordination headquarters to find out what happened to their daughter, but Zahra, helpless, didn’t know where to call.

Once again she mutters to herself and weeps silently. She goes on to say that meanwhile, her brother called and told her that there were rumors that Raheeq was killed at the Tapuah Junction. She says now that she started shouting and crying. People began to gather around the house and then she understood that the rumors were true. Since then Zahra hasn’t had a moment’s peace.

IDF soldiers arrived the next day at the home of Raheeq’s father, confiscated his Israeli work permit and warned the family that if there were demonstrations, they would demolish their house. Aqeed, Raheeq’s bereaved brother, the son of Zahra and Shajia, was detained this week by the Palestinian security forces, Israel’s security contractors and executors, after a post on Facebook by a young man from the town of Tamun mentioned that he was planning to avenge his sister’s killing. Aqeed has not yet been released.

Raheeq was shot at the Tapuah checkpoint by Border Police after she allegedly pulled out a knife and approached them. A video clip showed her lying on the road, with the echoes of repeated shots being fired in the background. The Border Police told Haaretz that the incident is under investigation, but nevertheless stated that, “from the moment that the terrorist was neutralized, the fighters stopped firing.”

An internal investigation by the IDF that was published last week noted four cases in recent weeks in which Palestinians were killed or wounded, during which soldiers and Border Police acted improperly. The investigation revealed that in all four instances, those forces could even have refrained from shooting altogether. One of the cases covered in the report was that of the killing of Raheeq Birawi. The report notes that the border policemen fired over 30 bullets at her after she pulled out the knife and walked toward them.

Zahra has not seen the video posted online in which the policemen are seen emptying their magazines on her daughter, even as Raheeq lies in the road. Zahra only saw the picture of her daughter’s body and her blurred face. The mother adds that in the picture there’s a knife in her daughter’s right hand, but notes that she was left-handed. Zahra finds it difficult to believe that her daughter pulled out a knife, and even less that she wanted either to kill herself or harm any soldiers. “Maybe they fired at her because she was the prettiest one in the taxi,” she says.

Israel has retained possession of her daughter’s body, in accordance with the despicable practice of preventing funerals that could escalate into riots. Zahra wants her daughter to have a proper burial, but has no idea how to go about asking for the body.

Is it possible that Raheeq wanted to die in order not to return to her husband in America? “No,” Zahra asserts. “She loved life. And she was a believer, even in America. She continued to pray to God. There’s no chance that she wanted to die.”

Just two weeks before she was killed, Raheeq celebrated her 19th birthday.

Her husband didn’t come to Asira after his wife was killed, and he and his family didn’t even speak to the bereaved mother by phone when she was mourning. And once again she mumbles: “God, punish the wicked, punish the wicked.”

Israel Funds Group That 'Saves Jewish Girls' From Marrying Arabs

Israel Funds Group That 'Saves Jewish Girls' From Marrying Arabs

The Social Services Ministry doubled its funding since 2012 for a shelter for young Jewish women 'rescued' from Arab villages. 'We have been cooperating with a racist group for a decade,' a source in the ministry says.

Israel's welfare agency has recently expanded its cooperation with an organization that seeks to "save Jewish girls" from marrying Arabs, Haaretz has learned.

The Social Affairs and Social Services Ministry has increased funding for a young women's shelter run by Hemla, a group headed by figures associated with the radical right. According to the organization, the shelter is geared toward "female youths from broken homes who are at risk of shmad" – a Hebrew term that denotes coerced conversion to another religion.

In a promotional flyer released two years ago, the head of Hemla, Elyakim Neiman, described intermarriage between Jewish women and Arab men as a "national plague."

"We are doing our best to save these girls before they reach [Arab] villages and give birth to 'Ahmad Ben Moshe,'" he said. "We provide for the girls' physical and spiritual needs." 

According to the brochure, the young women receive mental and social assistance until they "return to the path of healthy Jewish life, as is appropriate for the daughter of a king."

Another promotional leaflet for the shelter boasted that the woman who runs it, Rachel Baranes, has dedicated her life to "saving the daughters of Israel from the claws of the Ishmaelites," a term referring to Arabs. An article published in 2009 in "Eretz Israel Shelanu" (Our Land of Israel), a newsletter associated with the radical right, describes Hemla's boardinghouse as the only shelter for Jewish girls "rescued" from Arab villages. 

The boardinghouse's operations cost 2.6 million shekels a year ($685,000). The Social Services Ministry has recently agreed to increase funding for the institution to 1.3 million shekels a year, up from 800,000 shekels in 2013-2015 and 650,000 shekels in 2012. The agreements between the NGO and the government agency have been repeatedly extended without issuing public tenders. The ministry's funding and cooperation legitimizes the group and allows it to expand its operations. 

"For a decade, we have been cooperating with a racist organization that has officially declared that one of its goals is to save Jewish girls from the danger of" converting out of Judaism, a source in the ministry told Haaretz. 

Hemla has in the past been closely linked to Lehava, a radical rightist organization known for its efforts to prevent marriage between Jews and Arabs. Lahava Chairman Bentzi Gopstein was a member of Hemla for years, until leaving in 2014. That year, Hemla paid Gopstein's wife, Anat, 66,000 shekels ($17,300) for "seeking out girls" for the shelter, according to documents from the NGO registrar. In an audit from 2014, the registrar notes the ties between the two groups were severed that year but notes that due to possible illegal activity on Lehava's part, the connection should be reexamined in the future.  

The Social Affairs Ministry has responded by saying that Hemla is recognized by NGO registrar, and that the decision to raise the funding is meant to allow the group to expand the shelter, which is meant for ultra-Orthodox and newly religious teens who are in severe distress.

Neiman, Hemla's chairman, said that the group's activity has been fully coordinated with the ministry and that it has received praise for its work.

In his comment for this article, Gopstein, the chairman of Lehava, suggested that "Haaretz, which is funded by German money, should conduct investigations into Peace Now and B'Tselem and not try to undermine the activity of organizations and groups that work for the People of Israel's benefit." 

Full disclosure: As part of an investigative report conducted by Haaretz in 2011, journalists Uri Blau and Shai Greenberg entered the shelter and were accused of trespassing by the state prosecutor. Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein later suspended the proceeding and the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court closed the case.