Senior Israeli Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu believes the Israeli army should stop arresting Palestinians and execute them instead.
“It must execute them and leave no one alive,” Eliyahu wrote in a Facebook post Tuesday, according to Defend Democracy Press.
Senior Israeli Rabbi Calls for the Mass Execution of Palestinians
It's the talmudic racism that drives this whole murderous mess. There is no way around it.
This is ten year old news. Why are we dragging it up today? Oh, yeah, its a poor attempt to "prove" that Jews are evil and racist and that if the Jews would just give up their bizarre desire for, you know, survival then the world would be a much better place.
Now, from what I understand this particular Rabbi has been in trouble for racist statements before and I soundly condemn those statements. But in this instance he is not arguing from a place of racism, but from a place of self-defense.
He is not saying that Palestinians should be executed because they are Arab, or because they are Muslim, or even because there is a conflict and he doesn't like them. He says, specifically, that Palestinian people who attack Israeli citizens or Israeli law enforcement officers (ie Palestinian combatants) should be executed rather than arrested BECAUSE the arrests will lead to eventual release in some sort of bargain where the same person is likely to try to attack and kill more Israeli citizens or LEOs.
Most Israelis and Jews would find this justification for executing Palestinians abhorrent. And even the Rabbi himself, when asked if it is permissible to execute terrorists, says that it is permissible during the attack itself, but not after the attack is over.
So we need to be clear what we are actually discussing here. We are discussing the use of lethal force when defending oneself from an attacking terrorist in the context of a belligerent conflict.
What we are NOT discussing is a racist "Talmudic" ideology. That is simply demonizing not only this Rabbi's words, but all Jews and Israelis.