A Summary of: Israel In the grip of religious Zionists

Middle East Monitor
The overwhelming majority of officers who attended the Annual Conference of High Officers in the Israeli army convened recently, are religious Zionists...

...Based on data released in 2008 by the IDF's human resources department, 60% of officers in the Israeli army are followers of religious Zionism. The figures are even higher in the infantry brigades where they amount to 70%, reaching 75% in the special fighting units. Former commander of the northern part of the West Bank in the Israeli army Moshe Kaplinsky anticipates full control by religious Zionists of the chief of staff within two decades...

Motives of joining fighting units

The spiritual religious leadership of Israel's religious Zionism encourages its followers to join selected brigades and special military units. Leading rabbis of the Zionist religious tendency insist that this orientation is aimed at bringing the army under their control...

Glasshouses of terrorism

The religious Zionist leadership managed to make a deal with the army leadership that would provide for the establishment of special religious military schools where religious soldiers and officers continue their religious studies while doing their military service. Forty-two schools of this type have been opened so far.

Although these institutes are fully funded by the army which pays salaries to their heads among rabbis, they are totally dominated by the Zionist religious current. It is worth noting that the curriculum used by these schools is racist and prepares the soldiers to be more daring in killing Arabs.

For instance, the "fatwas" (religious injunctions) and various interpretations issued by key Zionist religious authorities constitute the major subjects taught in these schools. Rabbi Samuel Rusim, head of religious military school in Ma'aleh Adumim, states that he teaches his students (soldiers and officers) the fatwa that was issued two years ago by Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu who inherited the leadership of religious Zionism that the fate of the Amalek must be implemented on Palestinians.

According to this verdict, God commands Prophet Joshua ( Yusha' Bin Nun) to exterminate the Amalek tribe living in Palestine completely, including men, women, children and livestock. In his widely spread Fatwa, Eliyahu believes that what was then applied to the Amalek must be applied to the Palestinians being the 'Amalek of this age.'

The Gaza war as an example

Ha'aretz revealed that the military rabbinate distributed to religious soldiers in the IDF a fatwa issued by Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, the Rosh yeshiva of the Ateret Cohanim yeshiva in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem and the rabbi of Bet El inciting the murder of Palestinians. Meanwhile military rabbi and former Brigadier General Avi Ronski distributed pamphlets to Israeli troops sanctioning the killing of Palestinians. "Kill them all", he said highlighting that they were not civilians...

Israeli journalist Amos Hariel reported a soldier who participated in the war on Gaza as saying that rabbi Shaul Eliyahu (the official rabbi of the city of Safed) preached sermons to soldiers urging 'no mercy' in killing of Gazans. Full story