There's a big flap in Israel now over the "arrest" of two prominent rabbis.
The arrests stemmed from their approval of a book called Torat HaMelech.
According to The Jewish Forward (http://www.forward.com/articles/123925/) the book states:
“The prohibition 'Thou Shalt Not Murder’” applies only “to a Jew who kills a Jew,” write Rabbis Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur of the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar. Non-Jews are “uncompassionate by nature” and attacks on them “curb their evil inclination,” while babies and children of Israel’s enemies may be killed since “it is clear that they will grow to harm us.”
Whether or not anyone agrees with the work, it seems the rabbinical establishment, represented by Dov Lior and Yaakov Yosef, the latter Ovadia Yosef's son, and the government, represented by the police and Shin Bet are working overtime to divide the country.
As it happens, Hakham Ovadia is opposed to the book; see http://tinyurl.com/6z5hj97.
The rabbis (Lior and Yosef) apparently were initially requested to meet with police to explain why they would lend their name to a book that suggests killing non-Jews is permitted.
(For one of the author's takes on the book read the Jerusalem Post article at http://tinyurl.com/3aq6xme.)
The rabbis, being rabbis, claim that they are above the law of the land, that they are following Torah law by refusing to meet with the police. But Israel is not, after all, Saudia or the former Soviet Union; there was no threat (as far as I know) to their freedom. If there is any where in Bik'tav or even ba'al pei where it says rabbis are exempt from civil law just because they are rabbis, this Jew never has seen it.
So the police arrested them and took them to a near-by police facility for questioning. Both men were released after a brief interrogation.
I'm not a rabbi (for which I thank the Almighty), nor do I play one on tv.
But it seems I read somewhere that the law of the land is the law ("dina d'malchuta dina") - and I don't recall a caveat that added "except in Israel."
I also don't recall any place in Bik'tav where it states "Thou shalt not murder Jews"; the sixth of the Big Ten simply states that we are not to murder (note "murder" not "kill") - not once but twice - שמות כ' י"ג ודברים ח' י"ז . Granted, ba'al pei tells us that if someone threatens our life we should preemptively eliminate the threat, an approach I find wholly reasonable and agreeable.
I would not like to follow in Pharaoh's footsteps and start killing babies of non-Jewish parents (what if one parent is Jewish and the other is not - just maim the infant or perhaps kill every other child of the couple; that concept is beneath contempt).
I know, from first hand experience, that some Israeli Arabs are not only pro-Israel, but against the terror killings. Recently a village leader saved a Jew who followed his GPS to an area he should have avoided. (Never mind the question: "Why should a Jew avoid traveling in any part of Israel?" The answer is, in a word, "politics.") I know second hand of an Arab who helped my sister-in-law, a very Jewish woman, when Jews walked past on a Haifa sidewalk, ignoring her plight (a compound fracture of her leg).
I also know, first hand, about Arab terrorists and "presents" from Israel's neighbors to the north.
While I am in favor of targeted assassinations - killings if you prefer - I am against mass murder as Torat HaMelech apparently suggests. Are we to become Pharaoh or Torquemada or Hitler and murder people because they are not like us?
It can be said with absolute confidence that the authors of Torat HaMelech are only presenting what Israel's enemies are saying against Jews - and being praised, not prosecuted for it. Even within Israel there is a double standard - or perhaps multiple standards - regarding freedom of speech.
