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All this takes place against the backdrop of the desecration of the Tabta Church overlooking the Sea of Galilee last week, also by groups of Jewish youth acting in the name of religion. Can there be a greater desecration of God’s name in the Holy Land than Jews doing to other religions what was done to their fathers and ancestors by other governments and religions throughout centuries of exile? They may wear the kippot, tzitzit, etc., but the last thing that they, or their teachers (who call themselves rabbis) can be labeled is “religious.” It is the ultimate “chilul hashem” (desecration of God’s name) which they have performed and it is high time that we, and our government, stopped pretending that this is just a small group of deviant youth which doesn’t reflect the wider sub-strata of society within which they are growing up and being educated.We should have been proud of the fact that the president and prime minister condemned the action, that Knesset speaker Yuli Edelstein convened a group of rabbis and religious leaders to set up a fund to help repair the damage to the church. But we didn’t hear any major statements of denunciation from the Chief Rabbinate, the official state religious authority.Most of the right-wing government ministers have remained silent, where they would have been the first to shout out loud were it a Jewish cemetery or synagogue under attack elsewhere in the world (in Europe or North America), demanding that the respective governments and police forces immediately take action to arrest the culprits, to make good the damage and to put in place security measures aimed at ensuring that such activities are not repeated in the future.Instead, we have heard one of the country’s most extreme right-wing rabbis, Dov Lior, formerly of Kiryat Arba and recently relocated to Jerusalem, questioning the idea that Jews should donate money toward the restoration of the church, arguing instead that the same money should be used for restoring the desecrated graves on the Mount of Olives which have been damaged by loathsome people acting in the name of Palestinian nationalism and Islam.As though there is some symmetry in acts of desecration. If they can do it to us, then we have the right to do it to them. Reducing this bitter and endless conflict to tit for tat child’s game – what you can do I can do better.Lior conveniently ignores one of the most important tenets of his own religious Zionist ideology – namely, that the Jewish people are sovereign in their own land after 2,000 years of exile and, as such, are ultimately responsible for the safety and freedom of everyone living under their control. Sovereignty comes with obligations, not just rights. Given the history of the Jewish people in exile, there can be no greater obligation than showing to the world that Jewish sovereignty really does honor and protect the rights of religious minorities and freedom of religious practice, in a way that was not always accorded to the Jews throughout the long history of persecution and oppression.Lior and like-minded rabbis also forget to acknowledge the fact that the religion in whose name they speak has very clear teachings concerning the rights of the “ger,” the stranger in our midst. If we are unable to live up to these standards, then we have failed to honor the independence and sovereignty for which we have fought so hard, and which still stands in the balance as our enemies (and we have plenty of these) would like nothing better than for the State of Israel to disappear back into the sea of the Diaspora.They would like nothing better than to show that the Jewish state has no more regard for holy Muslim and Christian sites than that displayed, for centuries past, for Jewish institutions and places of worship throughout the world.While Edelstein and prominent religious leaders such as former government minister Rabbi Michael Melchior, should be commended for the action that they have taken to partially reimburse the church for the damage, it should not have had to come to this.The government should have immediately, within hours of the church desecration occurring, offered to pay the full cost of restoration. They should not have had to rely on private contributions to make good the damage and, for that matter, for only a small part of the actual cost.It is high time the government also made it clear that those people who desecrate Muslim and Christian sites in Israel are the full equivalent of anti-Semitic hooligans, terrorists, not misguided youths, who should be arrested, charged and imprisoned for lengthy periods of time. The disgrace that they bring to Israel and the Jewish people is immeasurable and only helps to turn the few friends we still have in the world against us.This not turning the other cheek. Israel should be proud that it is expected to behave according to different, higher, principles. Just as we do not want to be judged by the standards of the barbaric behavior and terrorism of some of the neighboring regimes, so too we do not want to be judged in comparison with the anti-Jewish behavior of groups around the world. If that opens us to greater criticism when we fail to behave according to these principles, then that should be seen as a badge of merit, not as a weakness.Failing to do so means that we have betrayed the most important principle of being a sovereign nation in our own land, the responsibility of caring for all those who are subject to our control. Those who would spit on priests in the Old City of Jerusalem, write anti-Christian graffiti on the wall of a monastery or damage a church in the Galilee are directly responsible for weakening Israel’s own sovereignty and its justification for Jewish rule in the Land of Israel.The writer is dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Ben-Gurion University. The views expressed are his alone.
Borderline Views: Ensuring religious freedom in Israel
It is high time the government also made it clear that those people who desecrate Muslim and Christian sites in Israel are the full equivalent of anti-Semitic hooligans, terrorists.
