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Sacks
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LONDON,
August 27 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – Israel’s policies
against the Palestinians are “incompatible” with the tenets of
Judaism, Britain’s chief rabbi Jonathan Sacks said Tuesday, August
27, a U.K. newspaper reported.
“I
regard the current situation as nothing less than tragic, because it
is forcing Israel into postures that are incompatible in the long run
with our deepest ideals,” Sacks said in an interview
with the Guardian newspaper, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
“There
are things that happen on a daily basis which make me feel very
uncomfortable as a Jew,” said the man who has led Britain’s
280,000 Jews since 1991.
“There
is no question that this kind of prolonged conflict, together with the
absence of hope, generates hatreds and insensitivities that in the
long run are corrupting to a culture,” he added.
Sacks
said he was “profoundly shocked” by reports that Israeli soldiers
had recently posed, smiling, next to the body of a dead Palestinian.
Sacks
said he was convinced that Israel should give back all the land it had
seized in 1967 “for the sake of peace”, said AFP.
The
Guardian predicted that Sack’s comments will “send shockwaves
through Israel and the world Jewish community.”
“Despite
the careful phrasing of his remarks, referring twice to dangers ‘in
the long run’, many in rightwing Jewish and Israeli circles will be
angered by his comments,” said the paper
Professor
Sacks departs from his usual policy of offering only public
endorsement of Israel, and broad support for moves toward peace, by
giving an explicit verdict on the effect that 35 years of military
occupation and decades of conflict are having on Israel and the Jewish
people, said the Guardian.
Speaking
to the Guardian, a senior Jewish community figure said that “The
nature of these comments are quite unlike anything he has ever said
before. The right will be surprised and angry.”
The
paper said that Sacks has always preferred to be a public defender of
Israel and that at the time of the Oslo peace process, he was in
regular correspondence with the former Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak
Rabin.
Sacks
also called in his interview with the Guardian, for a dialogue with
Sheikh Abu Hamza, a Muslim scholar in the U.K, who is viewed by many
in the west as being an “extremist”.
Sacks
also revealed for the first time that he has met with one of Iran’s
highest ranking scholars, Ayatollah Abdullah Javadi-Amoli, at a
meeting brokered by the U.K. Foreign Office during a U.N. conference
of religious leaders in New York in 2000.
“We
established within minutes a common language”, Sacks told the
Guardian, the “particular language believers share.”
Sack’s
new book is subtitled “How to avoid the clash of civilizations”,
and aims to offer the world a roadmap away from disaster, said the
Guardian, adding that he calls on orthodox faiths in particular to
realize that difference is not a problem to be managed, but an
“essential” part of creation itself.
In
Israel, there are several orthodox Jewish organizations that are
against the formation of the state of Israel and against its
practices. One of these organizations is Neturei
Karta.
Neturei-Karta
is the Aramaic term for ‘Guardians of the City’. The name was
given to a group of Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem who refuse to recognize
the existence or authority of Israel and make a point of publicly
demonstrating their position and the position of the Torah and what
they call the “authentic unadulterated Judaism.”
The
group was founded in Jerusalem, Palestine in 1938, splitting off from
Agudas Yisroel. Agudas Yisroel was established 87 years ago for the
purpose of fighting Zionism, but later joined it.
Neturei
Karta oppose the so-called “State of Israel” not because it
operates secularly, but because the entire concept of a sovereign
Jewish state is contrary to Jewish Law.
“The
true Jews remain faithful to Jewish belief and are not contaminated
with Zionism,” the group says on its website. “The true Jews are
against dispossessing the Arabs of their land and homes. According to
the Torah, the land should be returned to them.”
Click
here to read the full text of the Sack’s interview with the Guardian
