Israel’s Naftali Bennett Is Calling for Jihad

[Israeli]

The dispute over the illegal outpost Amona shows how the hard-liner plans to lead the right wing against the government.

Haaretz Editorial Oct 08, 2016

Habayit Hayehudi leader Naftali Bennett said last week that “we must give our lives” for the annexation of the West Bank to Israel. This isn’t an eccentric zealot or a rabbi who sends the so-called hilltop youth to attack Palestinians and their property. It’s the education minister, a member of the security cabinet and the leader of a party in the governing coalition.

We “have to move from a holding action to a decisive action,” said Bennett, who likes to use military terms and wax nostalgic over his military service. He also urged Israelis to “mark the dream – Judea and Samaria will be part of sovereign Israel. We must act today and give our lives” for the cause.

Bennett was speaking at a conference in Jerusalem in memory of settler leader Hanan Porat, one of the Gush Emunim leaders who clashed with Labor governments in the ‘70s over the West Bank settlements. Bennett used the historical context to outflank Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the right and criticize him over the plans to evacuate the illegal outpost Amona by the end of the year.

Under heavy international pressure, Netanyahu is seeking a solution to the delay in evacuating Amona, which reflects ongoing contempt for the law and the High Court of Justice. As prime minister, he is seeking a compromise between the court’s ruling and the settlers, who are threatening him.

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[oberliner]

1. Doesn't jihad just mean a personal struggle?

Internal and external efforts to be a good person?

Jihad: A Misunderstood Concept from Islam - What Jihad is, and is not

The Arabic word "jihad" is often translated as "holy war," but in a purely linguistic sense, the word " jihad" means struggling or striving.

The arabic word for war is: "al-harb".

In a religious sense, as described by the Quran and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad (s), "jihad" has many meanings. It can refer to internal as well as external efforts to be a good Muslims or believer, as well as working to inform people about the faith of Islam.

If military jihad is required to protect the faith against others, it can be performed using anything from legal, diplomatic and economic to political means. If there is no peaceful alternative, Islam also allows the use of force, but there are strict rules of engagement.

Innocents - such as women, children, or invalids - must never be harmed, and any peaceful overtures from the enemy must be accepted.

http://islamicsupremecouncil.org/understanding-islam/legal-rulings/5-jihad-a-misunderstood-concept-from-islam.html?start=9

[Israeli]

2. The Feigned Democracy of Israel's Education Minister

In the controversy over Naftali Bennett's call to fight for the settlements, the most dangerous part of his remarks passed almost unnoticed.

Iris Leal Oct 10, 2016

Naftali Bennett’s intervention in the deliberation around his recent statement about “giving our lives” for the settlements occurred Friday on Twitter. “To all those asking: To give one’s life = to make great effort toward a goal,” he tweeted, and ended his clarification by wishing all a peaceful Shabbat.

It was an almost peaceful Shabbat, because even afterward, the debate continued to percolate in an effort to get to the bottom of his initial remarks, made at a conference of all the settlement leaders last Thursday. “We have to mark the dream, and the dream is that Judea and Samaria will be part of the sovereign State of Israel,” he said. “We have to act today, and we must give our lives. We can’t keep marking the Land of Israel as a tactical target and a Palestinian state as the strategic target.”

The reason these words caused a sonic boom is self-evident. The combination of terror and ideology is deadly. The Middle East does not lack crazies who perceive their struggle in the apocalyptic terms of a religious war. That’s why one might immediately wonder whether this remark doesn’t contain some sort of call for Jewish martyrdom, and whether it doesn’t, heaven forfend, encourage the “wild weeds” — the euphemism for those who torched the Dawabsheh home in Duma, those who murdered Mohammed Abu Khdeir, the abusers among the Jewish settlement in Hebron and the pagan worshipers at the “wedding of hate” — to fill a container with kerosene or strap on an explosive belt.

Nevertheless, and without a bit of irony, I believe Bennett when he said that when he asked his listeners to give their lives, he meant that they should do everything in their power to get the West Bank annexed to Israel. I think the context, as quoted above, ought to calm down anyone who’s worried.

Translated into sane language, Bennett was saying that we have to make every effort and try with all our might to annex territory captured in war, along with its population — now numbering 2.5 million people — which, as history has shown, is ready to give their lives to get rid of our imposed regime and frustrate the fulfillment of the imperialistic dream of settling the entire historic Land of Israel. That’s all.

Or almost all. Because at the margins of remarks aimed at reminding this public of their desire to redeem this strip of Palestinian land, Bennett said that the government is trying to circumvent the will of the people with legal tools. It was actually this sentence, which cries out for discussion and elaboration, that should have rang the nuclear warning alarm. Yet it passed almost unnoticed.

Because between us, what does a government minister mean when he says that his own government is trying to circumvent the expressed will of the majority? Here’s a translation of this dangerous remark: Parliamentary democracy today is a sham because it doesn’t reflect the sentiments of the people and their messianic yearnings, and as such it undermines its own definition.

Between Bennett and his party colleagues and the public for whom those remarks were intended, there’s an understanding that their pro-democratic rhetoric is an agreed pretense. The purpose of their democratic impersonation during the days of the messianic right-wing Gush Emunim movement and today was and is to groom themselves to be a legitimate part of the legal and political systems. It is all so that they can work from the inside to realize the divine promise and uphold the sanctity of the land.

They’ve marked the dream and believe this dream is common to the entire people. If it’s not realized, it will constitute the shattering of the democratic illusion — at which point we can finally get rid of it.

And may we all have an almost good year.

Source : http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.746765