Posted on 08/18/24
| News Source: Arutz-7
Har Etzion hesder yeshiva Rosh Yeshiva Rabbi Yaakov Medan, a leading figure in the Religious Zionist community, warned that recent extreme right violence against Arabs in Judea and Samaria, and the silence from settler and rabbinic leaders in the face of this violence, will bring great harm to the entire Jewish community of Judea and Samaria.
Rabbi Medan noted that the fast of Tisha B'Av, marking the anniversary of the destruction of the Holy Temples and Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel, was held last week, and that the Talmudic story of Kamsa and Bar Kamsa, which provides an explanation for why the Second Temple was destroyed, is highly critical of the silence of that generation's great rabbinical leaders.
The rabbis were silent in the face of an injustice inflicted on an accidental party guest due to their "humility."
"Last week there was a serious riot against Bedouins from Rahat who accidentally entered Givat Ronen at the foot of Har Bracha. A few days later there was a particularly severe riot in the village of Jit in Samaria, a riot that ended in blood," he said.
He noted, "The riot was probably a reaction to throwing stones at a Jewish vehicle, but the Arab victims of it were not necessarily the stone throwers. These riots, apart from the moral problem inherent to them and also the added burden on the security forces who are overworked in the task of protecting Jewish lives, were photographed and published throughout the world. The desecration of God's name caused by them, and with it the comparison of the settlers in Judea and Samaria to Hamas, cause us damage of indescribable magnitude."