Rabbi who wants to kill children bomb holy sites backtracks

[maz]

http://momentmagazine.wordpress.com/200 ... -friedman/

From that article that was posted on I Am The Witness

US Chabad Rabbi calls on Israel to kill Palestinian 'women, children and cattle'

http://atheonews.blogspot.com/2009/06/r ... ality.html

But he still thinks that the IDF should kill women and children and bomb holy sites. I think this rabbi is a lying sick fuck.

The following is a response from Rabbi Manis Friedman:

I would like to clarify the answer published in my name in last month's issue of Moment Magazine.

First of all, the opinions published in my name are solely my own, and do not represent the official policy of any Jewish movement or organization.

Additionally, my answer, as published, is misleading. For it is, in truth, an answer to a different question.

It is obvious, I thought, that any neighbor of the Jewish people should be treated, as the Torah commands us, with respect and compassion. Fundamental to the Jewish faith is the concept that every human being was created in the image of G-d, and our sages instruct us to support the non-Jewish poor along with the poor of our own brethren.


The question my statement addresses is: how should we act in time of war, when our neighbors attack us, using their women, children and religious holy places as shields. I attempted to briefly address some of the ethical issues related to forcing the military to withhold fire from certain people and places, at the unbearable cost of widespread bloodshed (on both sides!)—when one's own family and nation is mercilessly targeted from those very people and places! (I look forward to further clarifying my brief words, too, in a future issue.)


I apologize for any misunderstanding the words printed in my name created.

[maz]

Pretty much the same thing I said yesterday

The Rabbi who lied through his teeth

http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun ... his-teeth/

I always thought that rabbis should be moral exemplars for their congregants and fellow Jews.  But it's possible that Chabad rabbis receive different training on this subject.  Rabbi Manis Friedman and his Chabad colleagues are backpedaling as fast as their feet can carry them from his odious statement in Moment Magazine which advocates Arab genocide.

I posted yesterday about a "clarification" issued yesterday by the infinitely empathetic JTA in which Friedman said he'd been misunderstood and really intended his statement as a response to how Israel should treat Arabs during a time of war (as if genocide during a time of war was somehow more acceptable than during a time of peace).

But Hussam Ayloush points me to a new story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune in which Friedman makes a statement which I'm virtually certain is a flat out lie.  And if it isn't he should easily be able to prove it.

So to any Friedman supporters out there reading this, I'd ask in all honesty can you believe him?  And if you do, will you write to him and ask him to produce the original statement that was submitted to him by the editors.  I'd be more than willing to withdraw my claim of mendacity if Friedman can produce evidence to support his claim.  Until then, he's a bald-faced liar and a moral exemplar of everything that Chabad is, and that rabbis shouldn't be.

One of the good rabbi's apologists publishes in a comment here his full, meretricious statement about this incident.  It only serves to prove further that he's being entirely insincere.  You'll notice that he now says he believes that a "neighbor of the Jewish people" (for all you keeping score at home, that's a Palestinian, but Friedman simply cannot utter the name) is created in the image of God and should be treated with respect.  What's curious about this is that he could've written that for Moment and didn't.  Instead he spewed the hateful bile he did.  Why should anyone accept his clarification now as sincere given that it comes only after he's been seared by criticism?