WorldNetDaily touts a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, but with a difference; both states are going to be Jewish:
JERUSALEM – A new movement is set to be presented next week by residents of Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] calling for Jews there to secede from Israel and create their own autonomous Jewish entity in part to head off the possibility of further unilateral Israeli withdrawals from the area, WND has learned.
Naturally, this “autonomous Jewish entity” will be theocratic:
[Yekutel] Ben Yaacov said his new Jewish authority would be “governed by Jewish law. Non-Jews, including Palestinians, are more than welcome to live there as long as they accept Jewish sovereign and agree to abide by the Seven Noahide laws, the most basic of biblical dictates.”
Yekutel Ben Ya’acov hopes to gather 200,000 signatures to bring this about. But who is he? WND‘s Aaron Klein describes him simply as a “northern Samaria resident”, a typically vague description employed by Klein when he’s trying to downplay his cosy contacts with the racist and extremist Israeli far-right. However, the Anti-Defamation League notes that “Ben Ya’acov” is actually Mike Guzovsky, a one-time leader of the now-outlawed Kahane Khai movement in Israel. He’s also pro-terrorist, and has supported the targeting of American Jews on American soil:
Under Guzovsky’s leadership, Kahane Chai has signaled its support of a bombing incident directed against American Jewish supporters of the Middle East peace process. On January 5, 1994, between 2:30 and 3:30 a.m., one bomb was placed outside a New York building that houses Americans for Peace Now, Habonim, Israel Horizons, and the Progressive Zionist Caucus. It did not explode, but was later defused by police.
A second bomb, placed outside the building which houses the New Israel Fund, exploded but there were no injuries.
Assassination is also approved of:
In a February 1994 television interview, Guzovsky called Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin “a Jewish traitor,” and warned, “One day, with God’s help, he and his representatives will be tried for treason.” Later in the interview, Guzovsky warned, “If violence has to be used to prevent this destruction of the Jewish state, so be it.”
And needless to say, Palestinian blood is even cheaper, as his comments after the 1994 Hebron massacre show:
[Baruch Goldstein] did what he did out of a love for the Jewish people…We don’t condemn anybody who is targeting the enemies of the Jewish people.
Ya’akov was also close to Eden Natan Zaada, the Israeli army deserter who murdered four Israeli Arabs in April (Ya’acov called Zaada, who was himself killed at the end of his shooting spree “the first victim of the disengagement”; Klein famously reported that Zaada had been “murdered.”)
However, last summer Klein did report on Ben Ya’acov’s views on Palestinian expulsion:
Ours is a grass-roots effort. We want to get to as many Israelis as we possibly can, and see what the general trend is. And that trend – to get the Palestinians out – is hands down what almost everyone tells us they favor.”
Ya’acov’s website on the same theme led to him being briefly arrested by the Israeli police in August.
Klein has had previous contact with Ya’acov, in articles where he is named as Guzovsky; in 2004 he conducted an interview which suggested that Guzovsky and his group were being unfairly described as extremists. But Guzovsky’s past actions and statements were not discussed, and now Klein is happy to disseminate “Ya’acov”‘s views without even acknowledging that he is Guzovsky. So why doesn’t Klein give us all the background? Is he ashamed, or something?
UPDATE: Klein has a sequel, in which he mentions the “late author and Knesset member Rabbi Meir Kahane”. As ConwebWatch notes,
Describing Kahane as merely an “author and Knesset member” nicely obscures Kahane’s own history of racism and violence, so much so that his Kach party (which lived on as Kahane Chai after his 1990 assassination) was declared a terrorist organization by Israel. We suspect there’s a lot more about Kahane’s “State of Judea” that Klein isn’t telling us.
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Note: Klein’s relationship with Ya’akov is difficult to track online, since there are various ways his names can be spelt, and Klein is not consistent in his usage. As well as the most recent “Yekutel Ben Yaacov”, we’ve also had “Yekutiel Ben Yacov“, as well as “Yekutiel Ben Yaacov” and “Mike Guzofsky”. “Yekutel” is seems to be unique to Klein. Here are some of the ways Ya’akov appears on the internet:Yekutiel Ben Yaacov; Yekutiel Ben Yaakov; Yekutiel Ben Ya’acov; Yekutiel Ben Ya’akov; Yekutiel Ben Yakov; Yekutiel Ben Yacov; Yekutiel Guzofsky; Yekutiel Guzovsky; Mike Guzofsky; Mike Guzovsky; Michael Guzofsky. One website calls him “Mike Rosowski”; this is an error. A New Yorker article also clarifies that Ya’akov is Guzofsky.
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