Kahanists Offer $100,000 Bounty On Heads Of Freed Palestinian Prisoners – OpEd

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Proving that they believe they are a law and a state unto themselves, Kahanists have offered a $100,000 bounty on the heads of those Palestinian prisoners freed as part of the Shalit exchange.  The particular prisoners who are to be killed are those who murdered Meir Kahane’s son, Binyamin and the latter’s wife.  The particularly astonishing fact here is that given the multitude of Kahanists who will seek to carry out this mission, there appears to be a need for an objective judge to determine who deserves real credit for the deed.

So Baruch Marzel, one of the inheritors of the mantel of leadership of Meir Kahane and a wannabe MK, will be such a judge.  In Israel, it’s no problem.  After all, Marzel isn’t putting the bullet into the guy’s brain himself.  He’s only awarding the reward to the blessed Jewish soul who does the deed.  What’s the problem?

The family of another victim is circulating flyers in Israel, Turkey and other locations, in which they too offered the same bounty on the heads of the two killers of their relative (read Maariv story in Hebrew).  They note that the vengeance they seek is sanctioned in the Torah, which seems again to supercede the laws of the State.  They also forget that the Torah arrogates vengeance to the Lord, not to man.

Aside from all the other astonishing issues raised by this story, there is the minor problem of Israel’s Kahanists who reject the policy of its democratically elected government.  For them, there’s no problem in creating a vigilante system which supersedes Israel’s in order to execute true Jewish settler justice.  Kahanists remind me a great deal of Hitler’s Nazi Party say around 1928.  Witnessing the chaos and anarchy of Weimar era Germany, they sought to fill the vacuum with their own brand of vigilantism.  Because the state was so weak it could not exert any countervailing force to rein in the fascists.

The problem in Israel isn’t that the government is too weak.  The problem is that the current government doesn’t oppose the goals of the settlers.  It would be no sweat off Bibi’s brow if a few of the freed prisoners were killed.  In fact, he’d make a pro forma statement about not taking the law into one’s own hands and after the cameras left, he’d drink a toast to the murderer and then phone Marzel to say mazal tov.

One has to wonder where all this dough in coming from.  Of course it could all be a bit of hocus pocus and a sham.  But the thought crosses my mind that someone like Irving Moskowitz or his friends at the Central Fund of Israel or Hebron Fund would be only to happy to put up the funds for the bounty.  In fact, I’d even suggest that the next Moskowitz Prize for Zionism be awarded to the first Jew who murders a Palestinan ex-prisoner.  And all of this is, of course, tax-deductible if you’re an American citizen courtesy of the IRS, which condones Jewish terrorism by offering it a tax break.

This article appeared at Tikun Olam

Richard Silverstein

Richard Silverstein is an author, journalist and blogger, with articles appearing in Haaretz, the Jewish Forward, Los Angeles Times, the Guardian’s Comment Is Free, Al Jazeera English, and Alternet. His work has also been in the Seattle Times, American Conservative Magazine, Beliefnet and Tikkun Magazine, where he is on the advisory board. Check out Silverstein's blog at Tikun Olam, one of the earliest liberal Jewish blogs, which he has maintained since February, 2003.

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