Religious Zionist leaders in Canada have joined the chorus of condemnation against Jerusalem revellers featured in video footage, released Dec. 23 by Israel’s Channel 10, of what has been dubbed by some media outlets as the “wedding of hate.”
The video, which has since been confiscated by Israeli police, shows mostly young Jewish men in traditional religious garb dancing at a wedding while waving rifles, pistols, knives and Molotov cocktails.
One masked man can be seen stabbing a photograph of Ali Dawabsheh, the Palestinian toddler who was killed along with his parents in a firebomb attack on their home in the Palestinian village of Duma last July. The attack is thought to have been orchestrated by members of an extremist right-wing group living in the hilltops of the West Bank. A number of people in the video, including the groom, were arrested by Israeli police last week.
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Israeli politicians across the spectrum, as well as many religious Zionist rabbis in Israel and the head of the Orthodox movement’s Rabbinical Council of America have expressed disgust at the video, and Canadian rabbis and religious Zionist leaders are also distancing themselves from it.
“We condemn all violence that is portrayed in that video. It doesn’t represent the mainstream religious Zionist community,” said Jonny Lipczer, director of Bnei Akiva of Toronto, the local branch of the youth movement affiliated with the religious Zionist Mizrachi movement.
He stressed the men celebrating in the video don’t reflect Jewish values. “I don’t think any moderate-thinking Jew would identify with what that video represents.”
He’s seen no evidence of this type of extremism in Canada, he said, adding that Bnei Akiva believes in finding solutions to the conflict in Israel “through dialogue and discussion rather than violence.”
Rabbi Chaim Strauchler of Shaarei Shomayim Congregation said that “any celebration of violence against innocence is absolutely unconscionable in our tradition. I, as every rabbinic leader you speak to in Toronto, will condemn this celebration of wanton violence against innocents.”
Rabbi Daniel Korobkin of Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto, Canada’s largest Orthodox congregation, had the most strident response. “I’m horrified that there’s a ring of religious Zionists in the world that believe terrorism against people – especially children – is justifiable and worthy of celebration. It needs to be condemned in the loudest of terms… there’s no room whatsoever for terrorism in the Jewish world.”
Even among the most right-wing elements of the Jewish community, he hasn’t heard anywhere near this sort of incitement, he said, adding that he was considering discussing the ethics and morals of combating terrorism and “the proper ethics of facing your enemy” in a Shabbat sermon.
No matter how obvious it may seem that people abhor terrorism, it’s important for Jewish leaders to condemn it in the strongest and most explicit terms, he said.
“Sometimes when the challenge is put forth to members of the Islamic community to condemn terrorism, they’ll say, ‘My brand of Islam isn’t associated with terrorism, so why should I condemn groups like ISIS and other wackos?’ But the truth is, the latter are doing what they do in the name of Islam. Just as we want moderate Muslims to distance themselves from that behaviour, we in the Jewish community have to do the same thing. If it’s not said overtly, we’re not fulfilling our responsibility.”