Rightwing Flamethrowers See US Role In Battle For Jerusalem – OpEd

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By Philip Weiss

Rightwing American Zionists are responding to the increasing violence in Israel and Palestine in a predictable way– seeing an American role in the conflict.

Here is flamethrower Seth Lipsky, granted a platform at Haaretz, to say that now is the perfect time for Republicans to join “the Battle of Jerusalem” and push for the U.S. to recognize Jerusalem as the eternal capital of the Jewish people.

[T]his is a moment to press rightful claims before a new Congress that will be seated in January and remain seated until the next presidential election.

Just what the doctor ordered for Jerusalem, huh? By “rightful claims” Lipsky means Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem, though he also throws in a crack about the Temple Mount. When Congress applauded Netanyahu’s desire to unify Jerusalem, back in 1996, Lipsky says, Netanyahu did not add: “and I am impelled to say that no Jew will be permitted to pray while on the Temple Mount, not even to move his or her lips in silent prayer.” His meaning seems to be that Jewish prayer outside the Al Aqsa mosque is another “rightful claim”.

Neoconservative Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens went further on Fareed Zakaria’s show yesterday, GPS on CNN. The following slipped out, without challenge from the liberals on the panel, Peter Beinart and Anne-Marie Slaughter:

what if [the U.S.] were — what if we were reassuring the Estonians or the Ukrainians or the Israelis that we really are militarily — militarily serious about their security? It’s not just about deterring rogues or adversaries, although that’s important. It’s also about reassuring our friends that the guarantees of Pax Americana are good. Because the last thing we want is a world of freelancers.

Stephens is hinting at American boots on the ground in Israel and Palestine, if things get too out of control for Israel.

Next, Ben Sales at JTA reports on a lunatic rabbi in New Jersey calling for the removal of a Muslim religious structure on the Haram al Sharif.

The rabbi of a major modern Orthodox synagogue in New Jersey has written a blog post that calls for Israel to collectively punish Arab Israelis and Palestinians until they realize “they have no future in the land of Israel.”

In the post, written Friday and titled “Dealing with Savages,” Rabbi Steven Pruzansky of Congregation Bnai Yeshurun in Teaneck offers suggestions that range from destroying whole Palestinian towns to uprooting the Dome of the Rock.

“There is a war for the land of Israel that is being waged, and the Arabs who dwell in the land of Israel are the enemy in that war and must be vanquished,” Pruzansky writes.

The post has since been deleted, but it’s cached here.

Pruzansky refers to “the Arab-Muslim animals that span the globe chopping, hacking and merrily decapitating,” and then writes, “At a certain point, the unrestrained behavior of unruly animals becomes the fault of the zookeeper, not the animals.”

So what should Israel do? According to Pruzansky, essentially end civil and human rights for many Arab Israelis and Palestinians. Beyond killing all terrorists and demolishing their extended families’ homes, Pruzansky says Israel should destroy entire Arab villages if more than one terrorist comes from them. All the residents of those villages, he writes, should be expelled.

Sometimes I think the best thing that ever happened to Zionism was Zionism; the ideology destroys itself in the end. These are all dangerous claims, cloaked in two cases in religious language, and they’ve got to frighten other Americans who are surely leery of war, let alone one based in civilizational clash.

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.

This article appeared at Mondoweiss.net here.

Mondoweiss

Mondoweiss is a news website devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, chiefly from a progressive Jewish perspective. Mondoweiss is maintained by Philip Weiss and Adam Horowitz. Weiss lives in New York state and Horowitz lives in New York City.

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