Bartholomew's Notes

Statement by the Ansar al-Sunnah Army and two other jihadist groups in Iraq (January 2005):

Democracy is a Greek word meaning the rule of the people, which means that the people do what they see fit…This concept is considered apostasy and defies the belief in one God — Muslims’ doctrine.

This sentiment was echoed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi around the same time:

We have declared a bitter war against democracy and all those who seek to enact it…Democracy is also based on the right to choose your religion…against the rule of God.

So, let’s compare that with an article from the website of the Israeli organisation Revava.org. The author is complaining about the Yesha Council, which is opposed to Israeli disengagement from Gaza. The author is also opposed, but he objects to the Yesha Council’s methods:

The Yesha Council and other lovers of democracy and western culture have promised to respect the will of the people and if they G-d forbid lose the referendum they will accept the results and no longer fight the Disengagement plan. G-d help a religious Jew who allows the “will of the people” to usurp the Torah and Jewish sovereignty over Eretz Yisrael. The Yesha council does NOT represent me and I will not respect any “democratic decision” that is contrary to Halacha and Judaism no matter what the self imposed Judenrat leaders proclaim in my name.

I believe in G-d and the Torah and THEY decide what I will support or oppose, not a majority of the Hellenist secular government or the corrupt Yesha Council who have always been little more than lackeys to the current regime.

Revava, of course, gets a great deal of benign publicity in the USA from WorldNetDaily’s Jerusalem correspondent Aaron Klein. Many of Klein’s reports are just cordial conversations with David Ha’ivri, Revava’s leader, and the organisation is continually described as merely “a Jewish Temple Mount activist group”. I’ve noted Klein’s failures before; the latest example of Klein’s feeble “reporting” has just appeared.

What Klein and Joseph Farah do not want their readers to know is that Ha’ivri is a hard-core Kahanist. Revava hates democracy as much as the Ansar al-Sunnah Army does, and for exactly the same theocratic reason (“Hellenist”, of course, has a particular resonance for the Jewish right, recalling struggle of the Maccabees). Ha’ivri is also a racist who makes bizarre accusations such as this:

Danger! Assimilation in Israel

…While statistics are obscured as to how many Jewish girls are being held in Arab villages, the estimation is that the number is in the tens of thousands. As part of the over-all war against the Jewish state, they systematically dispatch young Arab men to charm Jewish girls and take them back to their villages. These Arab men freely enter Jewish towns and cities where they entice Jewish girls.  Often, they pretend to be Sephardic Jews…In time, they literally become slaves, abused by the Arab husbands and families.

Any chance of some references? Nope. And just earlier this month, Ha’ivri was convicted for “incitement to racism” in an Israeli court after distributing a t-shirt with the slogan: “No Arabs, no terrorism”.

But of course, there’s no way that Klein will ever give a full account of what Revava and Ha’ivri really believe (or of their marginal status within Israel). The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is purely about Jewish democrats pitted against Muslim fundamentalists. Given how ill-informed Farah’s target audience is, any information that might undermine that narrative (moderate Palestinians, the Israeli peace movement, the racist and theocratic nature of the Israeli far-right) can just be safely ignored.

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