Head Of World Bnei Akiva Calls For Murder Of Hundreds If Not Thousands Of Arabs As Revenge For Kidnapping And Murder Of 3 Zionist Orthodox Teens
"An entire nation and thousands of years of history demand revenge. The government of Israel is gathering for a revenge meeting that isn't a grief meeting. The landlord has gone mad at the sight of his sons' bodies. A government that turns the army of searchers to an army of avengers, an army that will not stop at 300 Philistine foreskins. The disgrace will be paid for with the blood of the enemy, not with our tears.”
The secretary-general of Zionist Orthodox World Bnei Akiva Movement, Rabbi Noam Perel, called for indiscriminate revenge against Arabs for the kidnapping and murder of three Zionist Orthodox teenage boys on the West Bank, Ha’aretz reported.
"An entire nation and thousands of years of history demand revenge. The government of Israel is gathering for a revenge meeting that isn't a grief meeting. The landlord has gone mad at the sight of his sons' bodies. A government that turns the army of searchers to an army of avengers, an army that will not stop at 300 Philistine foreskins. The disgrace will be paid for with the blood of the enemy, not with our tears,” Perel wrote on his own Facebook page and on the Facebook page of World Bnei Akiva emissaries, referencing the biblical story of David, who killed 200 Philistines and gave their foreskins to King Saul as the bride price to marry Saul’s daughter.
Responses from readers were reportedly mostly negative.
"I'm ashamed of the movement I grew up in. I'm pained that you make me ashamed of Judaism, because you speak in its name," one comment reportedly read.
Others reportedly called Perel "insane" and a "Judo-Nazi.” Perel was even compared to Adolph Eichmann, the architect of the Nazi’s mass murder of Jews, the Holocaust.
Perel has now taken down the post and, in a new post reportedly claims he was misunderstood.
“My words have been misrepresented due to their biblical and poetic style. I deeply and unreservedly apologize for the anger that this has caused,” Perel wrote Thursday.
The 44-year-old Perel has been World Bnei Akiva’s secretary-general since 2012. The movement, which is essentially the youth organization of Zionist Orthodoxy, reportedly has over 150 branches worldwide.
Before heading World Bnei Akiva, Perel founded and headed the high-school Zionist Orthodox yeshiva in the settlement of Susiya near Hebron – not far from where the boys were kidnapped and from where their bodies were eventually found.
The leader of Israel’s parliamentary opposition, Isaac Herzog of the Labor Party, is the grandson and namesake of Israel’s Zionist Orthodox first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi, Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog.
Herzog called on Minister of Economy, Religious Services and Diaspora Affairs Naftali Bennett of the Zionist Orthodox HaBayit HaYehudi Party to condemn Perel's statement, and for the prime minister to fire him if he doesn’t.
"This is serious incitement that a senior member of the Habayit Hayehudi [Party] must never say in the State of Israel," Herzog reportedly said, adding that if Bennett failed to condemn Perel’s statement, he would ask the prime minister to fire him.
Meanwhile, the JTA reported that Ervin Kohn, president of the Jewish Community in Oslo, Norway, sent an open letter today to World Zionist Organization and Jewish National Fund leaders and to leaders of Scandinavian Jewish communities that demands Perel be fired.
“[The kidnapping and murder of the three boys causes] all kinds of feelings rage in each and every one [but Perel’s statement] goes against everything we believe in and the moral attitudes we try to instill in our children,” Kohn wrote.
So far, Bennett has not denounced Perel’s statement.
[Hat Tip: Sheesh, The Lion.]
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