Rabbi charged with incitement to racism against Arabs

Rabbi charged with incitement to racism against Arabs

By Baruch Kra and Gideon Alon, Haaretz Correspondents



Rabbi Yitzhak Ginzburg, who wrote a book praising
the deeds of Baruch Goldstein, who shot dead 29
Muslim worshippers in a Hebron mosque in 1994, was
indicted for incitement to racism Thursday at
Jerusalem Magistrate's Court for a second book in
which he claims that Arabs are "more primitive
peoples."




Ginzburg was charged along with
the Gal Eini non-profit
association, of which Ginzburg
was a co-founder and which
helped him to publish his 2001
book "Root Treatment."

The book contains
"conversations" between
Ginzburg and his students,

including one in which the rabbi advises a
pupil that Arabs have "no right" to reside in
the land of Israel. He later concedes, however,
that "there may be some among them [Arabs] who
are good that do have a right."

In the book, Ginzburg labels Arabs as belonging
to the "more primitive peoples, obviously on a
lower rung of the global culture scale," and
claims that Arabs have a "reckless,
unrestrained character."

Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein decided to
indict Ginzburg last month, after having
previously rejected several calls for him to be
charged.

In 2001, the State Prosecutor's Office decided
to close a police investigation into Ginzburg
for suspected incitement to rebellion, which
was opened following two interviews in October
2000 to the Kol Hazman local newspaper and in
January 2001 to Ma'ariv, in which he had
praised Goldstein.

"Baruch Goldstein can be justified," Ginzburg
said in the interviews. "He was 100 percent
sane. So sane, in fact, that he was able to
overcome the fear of Arabs and take action, in
a show of complete self-sacrifice, for the
people of Israel. This action is a
sanctification of God's name."

In answer to a question, the rabbi said that "we
can take down [the West Bank town of] Beit
Jala... We need to blow up all of the places
where there are confrontations or shootings...
If a house is used to fire from, it should be
destroyed, along with its inhabitants.

"We need to destroy a bloc of houses in order to
put an end to it. We shouldn't mess around with
tanks and small arms. That's nothing. It only
annoys the Arabs into continuing to make a
laughing stock out of us," he said.

The State Prosecutor also rejected a demand to
indict Ginzburg as early as 1998, following the
publication of his book "Baruch the Man," in
which he praised the massacre carried out by
Goldstein in Hebron.

But the State Prosecutor's Office warned at the
time that, "Rabbi Ginzburg would, beyond the
letter of the law, be warned by police that any
further distribution of the book or any similar
material would bring about the reopening of the
investigation and the initiation of criminal
proceedings."