Rabbi Danny Rich, Chief Executive of Liberal Judaism

There has been grief, sadness, anger and calls for righteous vengeance following the murder by ‘Palestinians’ of three Jewish teenagers near Hevron in the Judea region of Israel. The Israeli government is working out what to do about Hamas who, even if they did not have a direct hand in the kidnap and murder, at least gave tacit encouragement to this crime. There have been angry demonstrations in Jerusalem over these deaths and throughout the world people have been expressing shock at the callous murder of innocents. However, from the pen of Rabbi Danny Rich, the Chief Executive of Britain’s Liberal Judaism organisation, one of the smallest and most Left wing of all the synagogue movements, comes this, to my view, naïve and unrealistic statement:

“The murder of three innocent teenagers is beneath contempt and has rightly been condemned across the world, including by moderate voices on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide. The test now is this: will we allow their murderers to dictate the tone, or can we find it in our hearts to respond to violence and hatred with an even greater determination to seek peace and justice?”

Let’s examine the learned Rabbi’s statement in a little more detail shall we?

“The murder of three innocent teenagers is beneath contempt “

Well, Rabbi Rich, you got this part of the statement right at least.

“….. and has rightly been condemned across the world,”

Not in the more Islamically Savage parts of the world it hasn’t. In too many of the backward crap-holes created by Islam, these tragic and avoidable deaths have been celebrated.

“…… including by moderate voices on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide”

I can hear the moderate Israeli voices condemning these murders and also quite rightly, calling for no ‘price tag’ attacks in revenge, but where are the moderate ‘Palestinian’ ones? Such ‘moderate’ voices either do not exist in the geographical areas which the ‘Palestinians’ control, or those that do exist often find that they can only speak up in places like Britain which is not governed by Islamic savagery. I looked for a mainstream ‘Palestinian’ voice of moderation and all I found was the echo of my own voice asking “where are they?”

“….The test now is this: will we allow their murderers to dictate the tone,”

I think Rabbi, you’ll find that Islamic murderous savagery has been setting the tone in the region for many decades now. There is no root cause for Islamic savagery other than Islam itself. The Israelis could suicidally give up everything, and retreat to the seafront at Tel Aviv, and the Muslims would still want more.

“…or can we find it in our hearts to respond to violence and hatred with an even greater determination to seek peace and justice?”

There is nothing I’d like to see more than an Israel peacefully co-existing with Arabs. Fortunately I’m not as naïve as Rabbi Rich and some other Liberal Jews, who believe that one day the Arabs will be content, that contrary to history, appeasement will work. Appeasement NEVER works, appeasement only encourages the aggressor to ask for more and more. After much soul searching, I’ve been forced to come to the conclusion that peace and justice will only come when the ideology of Islam is slapped down so hard that never again will it be a threat to those who have the misfortune to be born Muslim and never again a threat to humanity as a whole. A world in which there is peace, freedom and justice for everyone, can only come about when the idea of Islam as a political force is just a whispered historical rumour. I would be the first to cheer a pluralist, peaceful and friendly Islam, but it may not happen in my lifetime. You can only make peace with those who are prepared to make peace with you, you cannot make peace with those who only pretend to be acting peaceably. Rabbi Rich, you appear to have forgotten the lesson that Britain and the world painfully learned at Munich in 1938, which is you cannot do deals with the devil and expect him to keep his word.

Recent tragic events do not need calls like this for everyone to play nice, these deaths require targetted vengeance, we cannot afford to wait for God to sort things out or to melt the hearts of Arabs and make them peaceful. One of the great lessons of the book of Esther, the only book of the Bible where God is not mentioned, is that sometimes you have do things for yourself and to get up off your knees and fight back. It is important to realise that Islam is not a religion like others, it is mostly a political ideology and a supremacist and violent one at that. In Islam, we are faced with a Haman of horrific proportions, that will destroy us all, including peaceful Muslims, if it is not countered. This is one of those occasions where fighting back, politically and on the battlefield, is obligatory and not optional. Vengeance is not always the sole prerogative of God. It was not God alone that won the battles of 1948, nor those of 1967, nor was it thanks to God alone that the monstrous Hitlerian regime was vanquished in 1945, but by free peoples working together with the God of justice against a common enemy. The ideology of Islam is the enemy of all, of Jew and Gentile, monotheist or polytheist, man, woman, adult or child. The deaths of these boys deserves more than a well-meaning but naïve statement such as that made by Rabbi Rich. He is right to call for peace, but there are some peoples, some nations and some ideologies that cannot be made peace with.

Although like every other reasonable person, I want peace, we have to admit that occasionally we have to beat ploughshares into swords on a temporary basis and recognise that sometimes peace has to come through superior fire-power and the defeat of the enemy. There should not be random attacks on random Arabs, that is plainly an injustice, but there does need to be justice meted out to those who plan, encourage or keep quiet about both this murder/kidnap and other Arab terrorist activity. Those who celebrate these deaths show themselves to be our enemies and should be treated as such.