" ....What we do not have is the original Aftonbladet story — which only exists in the perfervid imaginations of petty-bourgeois “leftists,” for whom the Palestinians all wear White Hats, in contrast to the Black-Hatted EEEEEEEVIL Israelis."



what makes you say that?

The article was never debunked: it was just poorly sourced. There's a lot of evidence showing that something fishy was going on, but unfortunately the reporter wasn't careful with the way he wrote the article and thus it ends up discrediting those who try to expose Israel's crimes.

Because it is a different story! Harvesting organs from dead bodies without the consent of the individual concerned (or their relatives) is unquestionably an abhorrent crime, but not one confined to Israel or “the jews” — and is a far cry from kidnapping and killing live individuals for body parts.

Rather than whipping ourselves into a frenzy over jewish vampires, this is the sort of thing we should be worrying about

An Army of Extremists
How some military rabbis are trying to radicalize Israeli soldiers.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, March 23, 2009, at 4:32 PM ET

Recent reports of atrocities committed by Israeli soldiers in the course of the intervention in Gaza have described the incitement of conscripts and reservists by military rabbis who characterized the battle as a holy war for the expulsion of non-Jews from Jewish land. The secular Israeli academic Dany Zamir, who first brought the testimony of shocked Israeli soldiers to light, has been quoted as if the influence of such extremist clerical teachings was something new. This is not the case.

I remember being in Israel in 1986 when the chief army “chaplain” in the occupied territories, Rabbi Shmuel Derlich, issued his troops a 1,000-word pastoral letter enjoining them to apply the biblical commandment to exterminate the Amalekites as “the enemies of Israel.”

Nobody has recently encountered any Amalekites, so the chief educational officer of the Israeli Defence Forces asked Rabbi Derlich whether he would care to define his terms and say whom he meant. Rather evasively — if rather alarmingly — the man of God replied, “Germans.” There are no Germans in Judaea and Samaria or, indeed, in the Old Testament, so the rabbi’s exhortation to slay all Germans as well as quite probably all Palestinians was referred to the Judge Advocate General’s Office. Forty military rabbis publicly came to Derlich’s support, and the rather spineless conclusion of the JAG was that he had committed no legal offense but should perhaps refrain in the future from making political statements on the army’s behalf.

The problem here is precisely that the rabbi was not making a “political” statement. Rather, he was doing his religious duty in reminding his readers what the Torah actually says. It’s not at all uncommon in Israel to read discussions, featuring military rabbis, of quite how to interpret the following holy order from Moses, in the Book of Numbers, Chapter 31, Verses 13-18, as quoted from my 1985 translation by the Jewish Publication Society. The Israelites have just done a fairly pitiless job on the Midianites, slaughtering all of the adult males. But, says their stern commander-in-chief, they have still failed him:

Moses, Eleazer the priest, and all the chieftains of the community came out to meet them outside the camp. Moses became angry with the commanders of the army, the officers of thousands and the officers of hundreds, who had come back from the military campaign. Moses said to them, “You have spared every female! Yet they are the very ones who, at the bidding of Balaam, induced the Israelites to trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, so that the Lord’s community was struck by the plague. Now, therefore, slay every male among the children, and slay also every young woman who has known a man carnally; but spare every young woman who has not had carnal relations with a man.”

Moses and Eleazar the priest go on to issue some complex instructions about the ritual cleansings that must be practiced after this exhausting massacre has been completed.

Now, it’s common to hear people say, when this infamous passage and others like it come up, that it’s not intended to be “taken literally.” One also often hears the excuse that some wicked things are done “in the name of” religion, as if the wicked things were somehow the result of a misinterpretation. But the nationalist rabbis who prepare Israeli soldiers for their mission seem to think that this book might be the word of God, in which case the only misinterpretation would be the failure to take it literally. (I hate to break it to you, but the people who think that God’s will is revealed in scripture are known as “religious.” Those who do not think so must try to find another name for themselves.)

Possibly you remember Dr. Baruch Goldstein, the man who in February 1994 unslung his weapon and killed more than two dozen worshippers at the mosque in Hebron. He had been a physician in the Israeli army and had first attracted attention by saying that he would refuse to treat non-Jews on the Sabbath. Now read Ethan Bronner’s report in the March 22 New York Times about the preachments of the Israeli army’s latest chief rabbi, a West Bank settler named Avichai Rontzski who also holds the rank of brigadier general. He has “said that the main reason for a Jewish doctor to treat a non-Jew on the Sabbath … is to avoid exposing Diaspora Jews to hatred.” Those of us who follow these things recognize that statement as one of the leading indicators of a truly determined racist and fundamentalist. Yet it comes not this time in the garb of a homicidal lone-wolf nut bag but in the full uniform and accoutrement of a general and a high priest: Moses and Eleazar combined. The latest news, according to Bronner, is that the Israeli Defence Ministry has felt compelled to reprimand Rontzski for “a rabbinic edict against showing the enemy mercy” that was distributed in booklet form to men and women in uniform (see Numbers 31:13-18, above).

Peering over the horrible pile of Palestinian civilian casualties that has immediately resulted, it’s fairly easy to see where this is going in the medium-to-longer term. The zealot settlers and their clerical accomplices are establishing an army within the army so that one day, if it is ever decided to disband or evacuate the colonial settlements, there will be enough officers and soldiers, stiffened by enough rabbis and enough extremist sermons, to refuse to obey the order. Torah verses will also be found that make it permissible to murder secular Jews as well as Arabs. The dress rehearsals for this have already taken place, with the religious excuses given for Baruch Goldstein’s rampage and the Talmudic evasions concerning the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. Once considered highly extreme, such biblical exegeses are moving ever closer to the mainstream. It’s high time the United States cut off any financial support for Israel that can be used even indirectly for settler activity, not just because such colonization constitutes a theft of another people’s land but also because our Constitution absolutely forbids us to spend public money on the establishment of any religion.

Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the Roger S. Mertz media fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2214440/
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

And yes, that last sentence is particularly hypocritical — especially in the light of the fanatical attempt by certain officers in the US military (e.g., Air Force general Boykin) to impose fundamentalist christianity on their troops.

What all these stories say to me is that it is high time the human race grew up, and flushed the dangerous poison of religion down the S-bend of history where it belongs.

bizarre...!what did that have to do with the article by j.cook?
why did you say that?
thanks for your supportyoure off on one....what is the purpose of that rant.?
and don't you support palestine in this post?

what are you about?do you think some on on this thread /forum maybe jews,may be arabs,palestinians ..or do you think that we are all "middle class bourgeoise leftists",to quote you.
you took more time slating "leftists " ,than understanding that this isn't just about the article in a swedish tabloid.

Bizarre? There are two things that *I* find bizarre.

The first is the fact that you’ve almost completely ignored my last post and chosen to comment on the one before. To me, this implies that you can’t (or don’t want to) consider the post about crazy rabbis advocating ethnic cleansing, preferring to salivate — for reasons on which I won’t speculate — over “jewish vampires harvesting organs from live Palestinians.”

The second is the petty-bourgeois romanticism of some who call themselves Marxists, but lionize nationalist movements (and, yes, I’ve read your Profile and noted your Irish Republican leanings), particularly movements that buttress themselves on the reactionary pillar of religion.

I “spend … time slating such ‘leftists’” because they are not leftists — they are bourgeois liberals, about as ‘left’ as Brian Cowen’s right eyeball.

This is Marxism for Beginners — if you’re going to call yourself a Marxist, you should at least be able to pretend to be an internationalist, and pay lip service to militant atheism (Remember Workers of All Countries Unite from the Communist Manifesto, and Away with all your superstitions and No saviour from on high delivers from The Internationale), not trail after clerical-nationalist medieavalism. You take a role in nationalist and other class-collaborationist movements, but only to split them along class lines, and you make your position clear from the first moment of your involvement, not after you’ve created “a nation once again” — this is called “telling the truth.” You don’t coddle ‘the oppressed’ by telling them that every aspect of their culture is ‘progressive’ and ‘revolutionary.’ You don’t applaud wildly when apologists for such ‘alliances of the oppressed’ try to tell you that “going out to bars to mingle with men to whom you are not related is not part of our culture.” You don’t wade about in murky waters like ‘islamic socialism,’ ‘christian socialism,’ ‘jewish socialism,’ or even ‘galaxian orthodox socialism.’ And you don’t give credence to urban legends (I refer you once again to http://www.snopes.com/horrors/robbery/kidney.asp ), simply because you are desperate to paint ‘the oppressors’ as ‘evil.’

Depends on what you mean.

• Do I support/would I defend (sorry, Devrim) the Palestinian people from being killed by the IDF and Zionist settlers? Definitely.
• Do I support social services for Palestinians being provided by religious organizations like HAMAS? Of course.
• Do I support (as a sort of quid-pro-quo for the social services) HAMAS imposing hijab on all women who go out in public, as they did right from the early days of the intifada, when they broke into classrooms to demand that girls wear hijab, or when they throw stones at unveiled women? No.
• Do I support the explanation touted by the ‘islamic revolutionaries’ of HAMAS — and parroted by pseudo-leftists — that these stifling yards of black cloth (or even a pretty multicoloured headscarf), meant to symbolize female ‘modesty’ — and subservience — are a symbol of ‘anti-imperialist struggle’? *Snorts derisively*!
• Do I support the social segregation of women, the estimation of shari’a that women are only worth half as much as men, or the persecution of women who ‘shame’ their families by having sex outside marriage, defying arranged marriages or other transgressions of islamic law? You must be bloody joking, mate!
• And finally, do I support the publication in the ‘left-wing’ Aftonbladet in 2009 of a story that would seem more at home in the Nazi Der Stürmer in 1939 — especially when the journalist’s most recent informants have apparently reneged on the story? If I did, I’d be betraying not only the Palestinians, but my own intelligence and humanity as well.

pointless replying to that....yawn

Yet another fantastic example of ultimate greed in the modern age.

so much for 1 or 2 leftwingzionist apologists on this thread.