The dark religious side of Israel

[IndianaGreen]

Last update - 04:36 12/04/2009

Gideon Levy / The dark religious side of Israel

By Gideon Levy, Haaretz Correspondent

A few days after tens of thousands of Israelis raised their eyes to the heavens at dawn to honor "the return of the sun to the place it stood at creation," and millions of Israelis joyfully read out praise in the Passover Hagaddah for genocide - jihad by means of horrific plagues and drowning infants - it's time to admit it: We live in a religious country.

That's the case during this holiday, when in some places it's impossible to find leavened products, when the rabbinate seeks to install special computer programs at supermarkets to prevent the sale of leavened foods, when Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger asks Rabbi Yaakov Israel Ifergan to get his follower Nochi Dankner to install the program at his supermarkets, and when the cows of our country are on a leaven-free diet.

We must admit that this society has rather dark religious aspects. Foreigners landing in Israel might ask themselves what country they're in: Iran, Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia? In any case, it's not the liberal, secular and enlightened society it purports to be. Thieves' hands do not have to be hacked off or women's faces covered to be a religious country. Just as an occupying state, which controls 3.5 million people lacking basic civil rights, cannot call itself "the only democracy in the Middle East," so a country that has no bread for a week because of its religion cannot call itself secular and liberal. Actually, there has been increased openness in recent years. More entertainment venues and supermarkets are open on Saturday in some of our cities than ever before, like before the Heichal movie theater riots in Petah Tikva. The dead can finally be buried in a civil ceremony in exchange for a fistful of shekels. But that's not enough to be able to call ourselves a secular society. We must not delude ourselves: From the cradle to the grave, from marriage to divorce, almost everything is still religious.

In no other country are there streets without buses and tracks without trains on the Sabbath. No other airline but El Al sits idle one day a week. Cold platters on the Sabbath in hospitals and hotels are also something not seen elsewhere. Roads on pillars because of ancient burial sites - a kind of pagan ritual to those on the outside looking in - and the separation in certain buses of men and women are also unknown in democratic countries. Religion has never been separate from the state here; hand in hand they oversee our way of life.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1077908.html

Religion! How it dominates man's mind, how it humiliates and degrades his soul. God is everything, man is nothing, says religion. But out of that nothing God has created a kingdom so despotic, so tyrannical, so cruel, so terribly exacting that naught but gloom and tears and blood have ruled the world since gods began.

Emma Goldman (1910)
Anarchism: What It Really Stands For

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/goldman/works/1910s/anarchism.htm

[aquart]

1. Yeah, yeah. Jews are monsters. Got it.

[IndianaGreen]

2. Have you read the article, you would have seen that it is a challenge to secular majority

to exercise its muscle to reign in the religious minority.

Obviously, you didn't!

[safeinOhio]

3. No, only the crazy settlers are.

[Ken Burch]

9. He was talking about religious extremists, not "Jews".

Indiana Green IS Jewish.

There's nothing in the article that's an attack on Jews as a group.

[Crunchy Frog]

12. Yes. That's exactly what IG was trying to say. I'm sure of it.

:eyes:

[henank]

4. Levy writes a load of utter stuff and nonsense

which I am going to fisk forthwith:

millions of Israelis joyfully read out praise in the Passover Hagaddah for genocide - jihad by means of horrific plagues and drowning infants
so Levy obviously would have preferred to have stayed as a slave in Egypt. He has obviously never read the Haggadah properly or he would have realized that the Jews sing in praise at having been rescued from a cruel and genocidal (against the Jews) slavery. But whatever. He obviously won't be persuaded by facts or by his own history.

in some places it's impossible to find leavened products
Oh my! In some places! But in other places he can. Religious coercion! Oh, wait a minute...

Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger asks Rabbi Yaakov Israel Ifergan to get his follower Nochi Dankner to install the program at his supermarkets,
But did he succeed? That is the question. I think not. And anyway, you can find leaven in some places so ... he can't just nip down to his local supermarket for one whole week! What an imposition!

Foreigners landing in Israel might ask themselves what country they're in: Iran, Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia?
Yeah, right, because they're hanging gays, stoning adulterous women, banning liquor and banning any other religions from the country. There are no Christian Palm Sunday parades in Jerusalem, no Good Friday and Easter services at churches throughout the country, the Bahai do not have a beautiful temple in Haifa and cannot practice their religion, and the Muslims are not allowed to worship in any mosque at all throughout Israel. Yes, of course, Israel is the equivalent of all those repressive Muslim regimes.

In no other country are there streets without buses and tracks without trains on the Sabbath
Has he tried travelling in England on a Sunday schedule?

Cold platters on the Sabbath in hospitals and hotels are also something not seen elsewhere.
Now that is an outright lie. My mother in law is in hospital (in Israel) right this minute. It is Passover and yesterday was the Sabbath. She received hot soup both night and day, chicken, meat, potatoes, etc. I'm not saying the food was tasty (it's a hospital, remember?) but it was hot. Why does he feel the need to lie? It makes everything else he writes suspect.

and the separation in certain buses of men and women are also unknown in democratic countries
True. But this separation, which I find disgusting, occurs only on private bus lines. You don't like it, use the national carrier.

Levy seems to object to Israel's religious character. But Israel was not founded as a secular democracy. It was founded to be a Jewish democratic country. He doesn't like the Jewish bit, no one is forcing him to stay.

[Violet_Crumble]

5. There's some utter stuff and nonsense in yr reply...

Has he tried travelling in England on a Sunday schedule?

I have. I had no trouble at all getting round using public transport. Of course buses and trains run on Sundays...

[henank]

6. Fair enough

The Sunday schedules were very spotty in the days when I lived in England.

Do you have an argument with my other points?

[Violet_Crumble]

7. We've got weekend schedules here and some might call them spotty...

Buses that normally run every half hour only go every hour, the express runs to the city that us office workers rely on don't run, and two or three runs round the same area on a weekday will be compressed into one run at the weekends. But as with England, it's got nothing to do with religious sensitivities and a lot to do with not having to pay any more overtime to drivers than they have to.

Do you have an argument with my other points?

Well,for most of them I'd have to read the OP, which I haven't done yet, so I think it'd be unfair to comment on too much until I do. But there is one other one in yr post that I think needs to be addressed, and that's the one about those private Haredi buslines that segregate people based on gender. If I recall correctly, the Israeli govt subsidises these buslines and they use the bustops that are there for the publicly run bus services.

[IndianaGreen]

8. Some of the founders of Israel were Socialists and Communist, they wanted a state for Jews

which would have been secular, not a Jewish state, which is a theocracy.

[Ken Burch]

10. The ideals of those people(people like Martin Buber)were lost somewhere along the line

As the ideals of this country have been too, at times.

And, in both cases, it was the "patriots" who did those ideals in.

[LeftishBrit]

13. One point here...

I'm English and a non-driver, so am fairly aware of public transport schedules. Public transport certainly doesn't grind to a halt on Sundays. There are some weekends that are bad on some railway lines due to their choosing that time for engineering work and repairs. But overall, getting around on a Sunday is not much more difficult than getting around on any other day.

Sundays used to be more strictly observed some years ago. Yesterday on Easter Sunday, most of the main local shops were open, though some with reduced hours. Ten years ago, this probably wouldn't have been the case.

[Sezu]

11. Israel has been a state for a WHOLE 60 years yet some expect

it to become as secular as some states which took 100's of years to get there and still have a ways to go. Talk about a foolish fight.