Joel Beinin, Jewish Peace News, 17 December 2009
The extravagant fundraiser for Jewish settlers in Hebron held in the New York Mets’ Citi Field on November 21 by the Hebron Fund is not a unique example of US tax-exempt institutions’ support for the most extreme of the settlers and their explicitly racist projects. Over $33 million was sent to such projects from 2004 to 2007. In 2007 and 2008 the “Od Yosef Chai” yeshiva (religious seminary) in Yitzhar near Nablus, whose rabbi proclaimed that it is permissible to kill non-Jewish babies and indeed anyone whose speech “weakens our kingdom,” received NIS 102,547 (about $27,130) from the US tax-exempt Central Fund of Israel. Other recipients of tax-exempt funds include Ateret Cohanim and El Ad (The City of David) which, for years, have been aggressively expanding the settler presence in the Old City of Jerusalem and the nearby village of Silwan. The bogus 10-month freeze on settlement construction does not begin to address the growing cancerous power of such institutions in the West Bank and all of Israeli society.
U.S. Tax Dollars Fund Rabbi Who Excused Killing Gentile Babies
Akiva Eldar, Haaretz, 15 December 2009
The White House condemns the torching of a mosque, yet respectable Americans contribute to a yeshiva whose rabbi said it’s okay to kill gentile babies. It is no surprise that the American administration tacitly, if unenthusiastically, accepted the excuse that the map of national priority zones the cabinet approved on Sunday does not violate the decision to freeze construction in the settlements.
How can President Barack Obama object to furthering education in a settlement like Yitzhar, located in the heart of the West Bank? After all, his own tax revenues contribute to the flourishing of the Od Yosef Chai Shechem [Nablus] yeshiva, the settlement’s crowning glory.
This is the same yeshiva whose rabbi said it is permissible to kill gentile babies because of “the future danger that will arise if they are allowed to grow into evil people like their parents.” In his latest book, the head of the yeshiva, Yitzhak Shapira, who bears the honorable title of rabbi, even permits killing anyone “who, through his remarks and so forth, weakens our kingdom” (Obama, beware!).