Ever since the July firebombing of a Palestinian home that killed three, the Israeli left—not to mention American and European media—have insinuated that the Jews charged with this terrorist deed were influenced by endemic and inflammatory rhetoric on the part of religious-Zionist rabbis. The truth, writes Evelyn Gordon, is very different:
Today’s Jewish terror doesn’t happen because of the rabbis. It is a protest against the rabbis, staged by young Jewish extremists. They regard the rabbis as too moderate and willing to compromise. They consider the rabbis Dov Lior and Yitzḥak Ginsburgh—whose names are whispered in television studios as the arch-terrorists of our generation—to be moderates because they don’t back violence.
The problem with the Jewish extremists of today is not the places they study but the fact that they don’t study. If they were students in Lior’s much-maligned Nir yeshiva in Kiryat Arba instead of wandering the hilltops of the West Bank, probably they wouldn’t have gone out and set fire to a family home in the dark of night.
The proof is [this]: none of Lior’s students is involved in the current terror activities. If he were to teach [terror], his students would probably follow his teachings. But that is not his way. . . .
Yosef Ḥayim Ben-David, who burned Mohammed Abu Khdeir to death in July 2014, did not grow up in the religious Zionist movement. Nor did the minor who stabbed several Palestinians in Dimona last October. Neither did Shlomo Pinto, who mistakenly stabbed a Jewish man in Kiryat Ata that same month.
Read more on Evelyn Gordon: http://evelyncgordon.com/debunking-the-inciting-rabbis-myth/