There was never really any interest for me to get into political views on this blog. I made an internal decision that I would stray from that world and try to focus on media and technology and how the common person interacts with it. But I guess that is really hard to do, if not impossible, in today’s world. Especially when you’re like me and part of a minority who’s numbers are only now starting to show enough to where mainstream media is now recognizing that it even exists without putting a negative  tone on having to even talk about it. 

Atheism in this slice of time is a wavering tightrope to walk, suspended over an amazon of razor wire, barbs and jagged glass that’s continually fed and cared for by a macabre battalion of bigots and hateful minds. Men and women marching as a willing and able militia, bent on serving dogmatic phrasing it’s prophesied shame by proclaiming people of different colours, creeds, sexes and sexualities unfit to even be allowed to live for the simple fact that they are different and they exist. I have read and watched as people living in what once was the cradle of humanity tear each other apart over millennia-old declarations, made by wretched versions of what we would today consider people, over who holds precedence  over a small slice of land on a far coast in the middle east. 

The struggle of Israel was always disappointing to me by that people who seemed to be very passionate and sometimes smart, so quickly rally to arms over who’s divine right was worth more, even under the cost of human life while things like civility, tolerance and compromise were somehow deemed incapable to solve a problem of these proportions. I also never really thought I’d see the day when someone on the continent I live on go out of their way to proclaim that murder, even genocide was not only an acceptable option but the only option capable of bringing peace to an unstable middle east.

Yitz Greenberg is a Rabbi living in the United States who, this past month was quoted in an article for the religious magazine In The Moment, that seems like every other armchair peer into the details of someone’s dedication to a belief at a glance, until you reach down to the section of the article named Chabad, where Greenberg makes his appearance: 

“I don’t believe in western morality, i.e. don’t kill civilians or children, don’t destroy holy sites, don’t fight during holiday seasons, don’t bomb cemeteries, don’t shoot until they shoot first because it is immoral.

The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way: Destroy their holy sites. Kill men, women and children (and cattle).

The first Israeli prime minister who declares that he will follow the Old Testament will finally bring peace to the Middle East. First, the Arabs will stop using children as shields. Second, they will stop taking hostages knowing that we will not be intimidated. Third, with their holy sites destroyed, they will stop believing that G-d is on their side. Result: no civilian casualties, no children in the line of fire, no false sense of righteousness, in fact, no war.

Zero tolerance for stone throwing, for rockets, for kidnapping will mean that the state has achieved sovereignty. Living by Torah values will make us a light unto the nations who suffer defeat because of a disastrous morality of human invention.”

The Rabbi has since released a statement where he proclaims that he was quoted out of context and the original question was asking what his views were on the topic of the treatment of hostile neighbours, according to his religions dogma. Although, I can see his concern about the way his statement was presented but if I were him I wouldn’t be so worried about the tentative way his words were made public but more concerned with the fact that he was staking the claim that religion is reason enough to kill men, women, children and livestock over nothing more than ideological differences. There is no misinterpreting this statement and the man’s views are as clear as day: peace in the middle east can only be achieved by the complete, unanimous victory of one side in this conflict; a victory that can only be achieved by the complete eradication of it’s opponents. The man is talking about genocide and that magazine is fine with printing it.

Despite my appearance and attitude, I am often an optimist and opportunist in the face of adversity or despair but seeing people with convictions like these in the same corner of the world where I live can be a weight and a shame on people who try to live a peaceful and free life as the ones who fought to allow us that chance intended. A weight and a shame, like a splinter at the top of my spine.