Israeli Extremist Group Leader Calls for Torching of Churches

Haaretz ^ | August 6th 2015 | Chaim Levinson

[MadIsh32]

The leader of the extremist anti-assimilation group Lehava allegedly called for churches to be torched, at a panel held this week for yeshiva students. Benzi Gopstein said he is prepared to spend 50 years in jail for doing so, according to a report by the Haredi website Kikar Shabbat. During the yeshiva intercession, known as bein hazmanim, many yeshivas hold summer camps for their students. These combine Torah study with other activities, like trips and panels to discuss current events. Kikar Shabbat obtained and posted a recording of such a panel at the Wolfson Yeshiva camp, at which Gopstein appeared along with Rabbi Moshe Klein, the rabbi of the Hadassah Medical Centers; Elad Deputy Mayor Tzuriel Krispal; and Yated Ne’eman journalist Benny Rabinovich. The panel was debating whether Jews are commanded to eliminate idol worship, as the Rambam (Maimonides) states. After Gopstein responded affirmatively, Klein hastened to interject, “It is a mitzvah according to the Rambam, but in our times the answer is no.” The issue generated an argument on the panel, with Gopstein defending his position that churches should be burned. In response to a question by Rabinovich as to whether he “is in favor of burning churches in the Land of Israel,” Gopstein answered, “Did the Rambam rule to destroy [idol worship] or not? Idol worship must be destroyed. It’s simply yes – what’s the question?”

[PetroniusMaximus]

Benzi Gopstein

[The Ghost of FReepers Past]

Well, every country has their crazy criminal types. In some countries, they are the ones in charge. (see Iran)

[Nachum]

Idiot.

[TexasRepublic]

How to win friends and influence people.

[GeronL]

He sounds a lot like the Muslims

[GeronL]

Wilful blindness to totally miss the real enemies of his country

[EinNYC]

He is one man. He does not represent the majority of observant Jews. Live and let live is my opinion. So long as institutions of other religions in Israel pose no threat to Jews, leave their constituents to worship in peace.

[GraceG]

Says a LOT about the rule of law in Israel!

If this joker was a Palestinian in Philistine land their government would be encouraging him and not arresting him.

Thankfully Israel Arrested this schmuck before he could do any further damage.

[GraceG]

[ He sounds a lot like the Muslims ]

Sadly he will be used by the Liberal Socialist JINOs in this country Like Jon Stewart so they can point and say “See see Israel has extremist Jews!” in a disingenuous effort to try to make some sorta weird moral liberal equivalency argument against Israel.

[familyop]

"He sounds a lot like the Muslims"

Islam was founded in the 7th Century on envy of observant Jews and a desire to rid Arab territory of idolatry for the purpose of stopping ridicule against Arabs about idolatry.

[familyop]

The nations wanted Jewish people to have a Jewish homeland. Now, they don’t. Appeasements won’t satisfy the nations. We know what they want to establish worldwide. Moshe ben Maimon was not the first to command the destruction of idols. What was prophesied without conditions in Tanach will happen. HaShem does not change.

[I do not speak for Jewish people. I’m not Jewish. I speak for myself as a conservative (old fashioned) American.]

[familyop]

"I emphasized several times that I was not calling to take operative steps, but rather that this was Maimonides’s stance, and that this [step] would be incumbent on the government and not individuals," Gopstein said.

A yeshiva is a school. The comments were made during an internal debate about idolatry. It appears that a journalist released some of the comments to the general public, and that other attempts had previously been made to entrap the group.

Haaretz, by the way, is considered in Israel to be a liberal-left newspaper.

[BlackVeil]

According to another article I read, he “narrowly escaped” being charged with incitement.

[veracious]

Sounds like a reversal of the garbage Martin Luther (Germany) advised about the Jews:
“
I shall give you my sincere advice:
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First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians. For whatever we tolerated in the past unknowingly ­ and I myself was unaware of it ­ will be pardoned by God. But if we, now that we are informed, were to protect and shield such a house for the Jews, existing right before our very nose, in which they lie about, blaspheme, curse, vilify, and defame Christ and us (as was heard above), it would be the same as if we were doing all this and even worse ourselves, as we very well know.
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Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. For they pursue in them the same aims as in their synagogues. Instead they might be lodged under a roof or in a barn, like the gypsies. This will bring home to them that they are not masters in our country, as they boast, but that they are living in exile and in captivity, as they incessantly wail and lament about us before God.
“
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