as this Editorial from the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, shows..

Extortion by sanctity; 18/08/2005   


The High Court of Justice is to rule in the coming days on a petition by the rabbi of the settlement of Elei Sinai, Yishai Bar-Chen, who is asking the state to move the synagogue building in its entirety from the Gaza Strip to within the Green Line. This is a disingenuous petition which, like other petitions of the settlers, makes sophisticated use of liberal principles like individual and community rights in order to carry out deranged messianic acts.
The walls of the synagogues, their floors, roofs and any other part of the structure in which people pray, are neither sacred nor sacrosanct. There is no reason not to take the buildings apart, sell them or make any other use of them the state sees fit. In any case, the communities will bring out the synagogue's sacred objects and memorial plaques. But moving entire buildings just because they served for a time as synagogues will create a dangerous precedent that will show up the weakness of the institution of statehood in the face of the settlers' emotional blackmail.

This blackmail is in operation all across the ritual board that stems from the teachings of the Yesha rabbis, Chabad and the like. They have sanctified not only the furrows of the earth, but the trees and the rocks. Neveh Dekalim is suddenly defined as a "holy place." The religious college may not be touched because it contains sacred objects, abandoning trees planted in Gush Katif is a serious infraction of halakha (Jewish law), for which transgressors will be punished in the world to come, and on and on with other inventions of this ilk, in the twilight zone between the devotion of the gullible and the simple, and cynical exploitation by religious politicians of their religion and their religiosity. The exploitation of the objects is nothing compared to the repulsive and well advertised exploitation of the worship of God. Leading this line, together with the extremists of the Gush, are the thousands of infiltrators who came to the Gaza Strip - they and their rabbis. They make sure to show up for morning prayers just when the army has to open the gate, to call for grace after meals or afternoon prayers just when it is time to pack or get on the bus. They hold on to the Holy Ark as if it were the horns of the altar and wail ecstatically over every book of Psalms, from beginning to end, the moment they see there are microphones and cameras around.

The soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces and the police are under tremendous physical and emotional pressure. The restrained and responsible manner in which they are dealing with the task shows over and over to every citizen of Israel the meaning of deep commitment to the flag of Israel and the symbol of the menorah on their uniforms. The cynical emotional and religious blackmail of the settlers and the infiltrators, taken from the dubious inventory of shallow and kitschy messianic ritual (some of which is tainted by truly non-Jewish symbols), nevertheless manages to reverberate with large segments of the public.

The High Court justices will be wrong if they let this noise influence them. The transfer of even one wall as a holy object will be enough to plant the seal of approval on false-messianism, against the danger of which the state has finally began to defend itself.