Rabbi Schneerson’s Contempt for Non-Jews Advertised on Buses in Israel
From the Israeli apartheid page on Facebook, via Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss:
A bus in Jerusalem has this caption in large lettering:
Israel’s bus company Egged has accepted this ad in Jerusalem:
“Statement of the kingdom. From the teachings=instructions of the [Lubavitcher] rabbiThe Gentile does not want anything. He waits to be told what the Jew wants!”
Mondoweiss comments:
The Lubavitcher rabbi was Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994). Schneerson died in NY and is buried there. If this ad were on a bus in NY, people would say it was anti-Semitic. But then, it couldn’t be on a bus in NY, could it?
P.S. Egged subsidiary EBS, had just lost a 320M euro 10-year contract in Haarlem district, Netherlands (Pop 155,000), after some demonstrations against its complicity in apartheid.
Rabbi Schneerson has not gone unnoticed at TOO, thanks especially to Trudie Pert’s 4-part series on him. And as I note elsewhere, commenting on a statement by former Sephardic leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, that “the goyim were born only to serve us,” there is clear evidence that such statements are actually quite mainstream in orthodox circles, and as usual, mainstream American conservatives are clueless about the contempt that Schneerson has for them. As Pert points out,
So taken were non-Jewish American conservatives by the “wholesome” Hasids’ exemplification of traditional family values, their promotion of prayer in the schools, and their display of religion in the public square that Congress eventually declared April 4, Schneerson’s 80th birthday, a National Day of Reflection. In 1983 President Reagan honored the Rebbe with a kosher-catered birthday party at the White House. Linked by satellite to the White House, Schneerson participated in the celebration from Brooklyn. Posthumously he also received the Congressional Medal of Honor [correction, 1/31/2015, Congressional Gold Medal].
Here’s another statement from Schneerson:
We do not have a case of profound change in which a person is merely on a superior level. Rather we have a case of . . . a totally different species. . . . The body of a Jewish person is of a totally different quality from the body of [members] of all nations of the world . . . The difference of the inner quality [of the body] . . . is so great that the bodies would be considered as completely different species. This is the reason why the Talmud states that there is an halachic difference in attitude about the bodies of non-Jews [as opposed to the bodies of Jews]: “their bodies are in vain”. . . . An even greater difference exists in regard to the soul. Two contrary types of soul exist, a non-Jewish soul comes from three satanic spheres, while the Jewish soul stems from holiness.
I conclude:
These fundamentalist and ultranationalist groups are not tiny fringe groups, mere relics of traditional Jewish culture. They are widely respected by the Israeli public and by many Jews in the Diaspora. They have a great deal of influence on the Israeli government, especially the Likud governments and the recent government of national unity headed by Ariel Sharon. The members of Gush Emunim constitute a significant percentage of the elite units of the Israeli army, and, as expected on the hypothesis that they are extremely ethnocentric, they are much more willing to treat the Palestinians in a savage and brutal manner than are other Israeli soldiers. All together, the religious parties represent about 25% of the Israeli electorate—a percentage that is sure to increase because of the high fertility of religious Jews and because intensified troubles with the Palestinians tend to make other Israelis more sympathetic to their cause.
Particularly important is the fertility of these groups. The present Israeli government is the most ethnonationlist in its history [still true today], but these trends will be even more pronounced in the future. In the long run, it’s going to be increasingly difficult to maintain the illusion of a universalist Jewish ethics no matter how much the [American Jewish Committee] wants to project that image.
Comments are closed.