Racism and Religious Zionist Youth Movements: Own Up
by Dr. Assaf David
May 30, 2013 3:15 PM EDT
Rabbi Avihai Ronski, former Chief Rabbi of the IDF and religious Zionist extraordinaire, a man who once ruled that the Sabbath takes precedence over a gentile’s life, and Jewish law over the IDF ethical code, has been announced as Naftali Bennett’s choice for appointee to head the Israeli government’s new “Jewish Identity Administration.” His job will be to instill “Jewish values” in the public. But if the religious Zionist youth movements are any indication, those values will be anything but universal or humanist.
A few weeks ago, in anticipation of Bnei Akiva youth movement members’ typically “provocative and racist” behavior during Jerusalem Day’s traditional flag march (“rikudgalim”), Rabbi Chaim Drukman issued a request. He asked that members of the movement avoid physical and verbal abuse of Arabs.
Not only did Druckman’s request fall on deaf ears (at least in some cases), the very fact that he had to make an appeal such as this raises the question: How and why has Bnei Akiva reached a point where it feels it must instruct its members to avoid “rioting” against Arabs?
After the events of Jerusalem Day on May 5, 2013, Jonathan Nevo, a student at the Hebrew University, wrote the following as his status on Facebook:
Bnei Akiva youth (in this case mainly girls) were screaming in the city center, “Muhammad is dead, Muhammad is dead, he is not a prophet, just another Arab, he has a mustache and it’s full of fleas and he sells goat cheese.” Their counselors stood by, encouraging them. The only interruption came when youths from a different branch of the movement wanted to prove that they’ve had more group spirit. No one stopped the chants or hushed them; not even when I warned them I was taking pictures.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/30/racism-on-the-rise-in-israeli-youth-movements0.html
Dr. Assaf David is a research fellow at the Truman Institute for Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and an adjunct lecturer there, as well as at Ben-Gurion University. He is a coeditor of canthink.co.il, where this piece was originally published in Hebrew. He also writes for Molad: the Center for the Renewal of Israeli Democracy, on the Middle East broadly and Jordan specifically.
