'Dial one if you know a Jew dating an Arab': Shocking Israeli campaign group set

[MikeWB]

EXCLUSIVE: 'Dial one if you know a Jew dating an Arab': Shocking Israeli campaign group set up 'hotline' to inform on 'traitors diluting the Jewish race' - and tried to split up model Bar Rafaeli and Leo DiCaprio
Racist Right-wing anti-assimilation group is against Jews marrying Arabs
Groups runs a hotline to report Jews in relationship
Members have targeted Israelis and Palestinians, Leonardo DiCaprio and supermodel Bar Rafaeli, and even Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg
They even protested at a wedding of a Jew who had converted to Islam
Lehava believes relationships between a Jew and a non-Jew is a Biblical sin
Critics say Lehava seeks to sow hatred between Jews and Arabs in Israel

Racist extremists who set up a 'hotline' to inform on Jews in a relationship with 'Arabs' and who targeted Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg are openly peddling hate and violence - but the Israeli government won't act.

Lehava, a radical fringe group in Israel, hunts down people sleeping with 'goys' - or non-Jews '- then 'persuades' them to separate, attacks Christians as 'vampires' and 'bloodsuckers' and is justifying attacks on churches using the Bible.

It accused supermodel Bar Rafaeli of 'diluting the Jewish race' if she did not split up Leonardo DiCaprio and has faced calls to be banned by the Pope.

Yet despite being under investigation for four years, the hate-filled campaigners operate in the central square of Jerusalem where they openly incite violence every Thursday night, the eve of the Israeli weekend.

And leader Benzi Gopstein boasted to MailOnline that he receives ten calls a day from Jewish people informing on friends who are dating non-Jews.

Emerging from a dimly-lit archway of a cobbled alley in the holy city of Jerusalem, waving black flags and shaking their fists in the air, they look like a gang of thugs.

The 'whole meaning of life,' Dov, a 21-year-old activist and Lehava coordinator for the central Israeil town of Modiin area explains, is to serve God and let the Bible guide your reason.

'To do what God says you're supposed to do, not what you think in your head that you're supposed to do. And if you marry a non-Jew, it just means 'I don't give a rat's ass about what God says -I want to be like everyone else who don't have a God.'

Founded in 2009, Lehava means 'the flame', and is also an acronym in Hebrew for 'Preventing Assimilation in the Holy Land'. For the activists, a relationship between a Jew  and a non-Jew is a Biblical sin - and something to be fought against.

It went so far as to set up a 'hotline' enabling others to inform on those who have relations with non-Jews, termed 'goys'.

'If you are in contact with a goy and need assistance, press one,' the Hotline's answer phone message stated, the Times of Israel reported.

'If you know a girl who is involved with a goy and you want to help her, press two.

'If you know of a goy who masquerades as a Jew or is harassing Jewish women, or of locations where there is an assimilation problem, press three.'

In a recording of the hotline obtained by MailOnline this week, the group has dropped the specific demand for informers and instead advertises martial arts seminars for the training of the 'Jewish Honour Guard'.


It also advertises upcoming protests together with 'La Familia', a notoriously racist football hooligan group who support 'Beitar Jerusalem' - the only football club in Israel's premier league which has never signed an Arab player.

La Familia activists have in the past ripped and burned copies of the Quran at football matches, held up anti-Arab placards in the bleachers, and shouted insulting anti-Muslim and racist slogans.

But it does not stop there. Critics of Lehava argue that the group seeks to sow hatred between Jews and Arabs and are regularly fanning the flames of violence in the already troubled and bloodied region.

When Jewish supermodel Rafaeli dated Roman Catholic Hollywood star DiCaprio in 2010, Baruch Marzel, the head of Jewish National Front wrote to Ms Rafaeli on behalf of Lehava, urging her not to 'dilute the Jewish race.'

Emphasising that he had 'nothing against Mr DiCaprio, who I have no doubt is a talented actor,' the extremist urged Ms Rafaeli to 'Come to your senses'.

'Don't marry Leonardo DiCaprio, don't harm the future generations.'

Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder who is an atheist with Jewish roots, faced a similar predicament when, in 2012, he married non-Jewish Priscilla Chan. Benzi Gopstein, the head of Lehava wrote to Mr Zuckerberg, urging him to 'separate from the non-Jewish woman and find a good Jewish one, and to make up for your mistake, go on a major campaign on Facebook against assimilation.'

Come to your senses. Don't marry Leonardo DiCaprio, don't harm the future generations
Baruch Marzel, the head of Jewish National Front
'I'm here, on behalf of the Jewish people, to spoil the party,' Mr Gopstein wrote to Zuckerberg, Al Arabiya reported, adding that 'Assimilation is bringing the extermination of the Jews to the seventh million!'

But Lehava's activities do not stop merely with protests, letters to celebrities and an answerphone machine.

Since its establishment, Lehava launched anti-Arab campaigns everywhere from shops and beaches to the synagogues and schools, bidding the public not only to report any Jewish-Arab romantic liaisons, but also not to rent Arabs apartments, and not employ them in workplaces. On the group's current answerphone message, Lehava praises 'Avihay Bakery', saying 'finally they fired the Arab who bothered the Jews'.

In 2011, the group even issued 'kashrut' certificates to praise businesses which illegally refrained from employing Arabs.

This and other activities amount to incitement to violence, argue critics. Lehava 'advocates hatred of Arabs in Israel and is based on racially-oriented and alarmist incitement,' notes a report by Israel Religious Action Centre (IRAC), a public and legal advocacy arm of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism. 'Lehava's basic message is that Arabs are enemies of Israel and that contact with them will lead to disaster and the kidnapping of Jewish girls to Arab villages.'

When asked about the so-called 'regular occurrences' of kidnaps of Jewish women by Arab men, the Israeli police responded that this is not a phenomenon that exists.



'I don't even remember the last time there was a case where an Israeli woman was kidnapped and held by an Arab man,' Israeli police spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld told The Mail.

At the marriage party of Morel Malka (a Jewish woman who converted to Islam) and Mahmoud Mansour (a Muslim) in 2014, Lehava organised loud protests outside the wedding venue, where crowds of activists screamed 'Mohammed is dead,' and 'Death to Arabs.'

In the weeks prior, Lehava published a copy of the wedding invitation on their Facebook page and invited activists to come to protest the union with 'banners and bullhorns,' while a court issued a restraining​ order against the group, bidding them to remain 200 metres away from the venue, The Times of Israel reported.

A crowd of Israeli supporters also gathered opposite the Lehava protestors, holding a counter-demonstration as a show of support for the couple. Israel's president Reuven Rivlin himself congratulated the couple, whilst denouncing Lehava's incitement as akin to 'rodents gnawing under the shared democratic and Jewish foundation of Israel.'

If you marry a non-Jew, it just means 'I don't give a rat's ass about what God says - I want to be like everyone else who don't have a God.
Dov, a 21-year-old activist and Lehava coordinator for the Modiin area
At the wedding of his own daughter in 2014, Mr Gopstein said were an Arab waiter to be found at the venue, the waiter 'would likely be looking for the closest hospital', according to the New York Times. After the main course, a video of the event shows some of the guests wearing masks and dancing and jabbing the air aggressively with table knives.

In person, Benzi Gopstein is at pains to come across as a softly-spoken and calm individual who claims to have the best interests of the Jewish people at heart. Rotund, bearded and wearing a large yarmulke, he scrolls patiently through his smartphone whilst sitting in a Jerusalem hotel foyer, showing an example of an email received through Lehava's Hotline.

'We get about 10 calls a day, from all over Israel,' he says. 'A few days ago, I got this: 'my 15 and a half year old daughter met a guy, she then met him again on a Friday and now she won't answer the phone - and she doesn't want to come home'. This was from Monday - on Wednesday, she came home. One of our guys spoke to her and now she's in a good place.'

Mr Gopstein says the group sends out activists to talk to the girls who have relationship with Arab men. 'If I will go to her and tell her: what you're doing is wrong, she's going to tell me to go away,' he says. 'But if I come with someone who has been through a similar experience, and who tells her her story - this helps.'

But a report by the Israel Religious Action Centre says that in 2012, the group published 'a page of shame' on its website, displaying the names of Jewish women involved in relationships with non-Jewish men.

The webpage referred to the 'traitorous women who consciously and as a matter of ideology have chosen to leave the Jewish people and openly live with or marry non-Jews...We want to expose them to public view and let their shame be known.'

Born in Bnei Brak, a strictly religious town on the outskirts of Israel's cosmopolitan and most liberal city, Tel Aviv, Mr Gopstein lost his father when he was 13 years old. Aged 14, he met the extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane and became his ardent follower and activist.

Meir Kahane maintains a cult-like following among the extremist right wing fringes of the Israeli society despite the fact that he was assassinated by a gunman 26 years ago.


For Gopstein and Kahane, there was 'agreement in all things - not just one particular thing', Gopstein says with a wistful look in his eyes.

'The most important was that he spoke the truth, he wasn't scared. What he said then... people can see today that he was right. We can't live together. There are some who want to take the Arabs out of the territories and some who want to give the Arabs away with the territories. But it's impossible to live together. In the past, people used to talk of living together - but today no one believes in living together. They want to give Jerusalem, they want to give everything - but living together will never work.'

In the past, Gopstein referred to the notion of coexistence as a 'cancer'.

In 2014, the Times of Israel reported three Lehava members were arrested and sentenced to prison terms for setting fire to a bilingual Jewish-Arab school in Jerusalem and for spray painting racist incitement messages on the school walls echoing the views of Lehava - 'There is no coexistence with cancer'; 'Death to the Arabs'; and 'Kahane was right'.

Activists from 'Talking in the Square', a grassroots organisation that every Thursday night holds a counter- Lehava gathering in Jerusalem in order to promote pluralist discussions of many core issues, say that the far-right activists have used a number of violent means to intimidate Arabs in Jerusalem.

On the night that the 16-year-old Palestinian teenager Mohammad Abu Khdeir was kidnapped, beaten and burned alive in a Jerusalem forest as the Israel-Gaza war raged in the summer of 2014, Lehava and other activists were out on the streets of Jerusalem, spouting racist and violent propaganda, Giora, an activist from 'Talking in the Square' says.


The police have slowly been clamping down on Lehava.

'In the summer of 2014, they used to shout 'death to Arabs', but the police told them it's illegal. Then they started shouted 'Arabs beware',' says Giora, explaining that his groups pressured the police to clamp down on those slogans too.

In the summer of 2014, they used to shout 'death to Arabs', but the police told them it's illegal. Then they started shouted 'Arabs beware.
Giora, 'Talking in the Square' activist
'Now they're going around with their flags -but if an Arab is walking on the street, if four or five of them [Lehava activists] approach him, he will feel threatened, even if they say nothing.'

The Israeli government has also weighed banning Lehava. In January 2015, Israel's defence minister Moshe Yaalon said he is considering outlawing Lehava.

'I did this because we cannot as a country allow racist phenomena to endanger in a substantial way the fabric of life here. I did it because we must fight in every way attempts to discriminate among people because of their race, colour, sex or sexual preference,' Mr Yaalon said.

But Mr Yaalon's words did not result in a ban and in August 2015, Israel's internal security agency, the Shin Bet, said it is lacking the conclusive evidence to outlaw the group.

Orly Erez-Likhovski, a lawyer from Israel religious Action Centre (IRAC), says the organisation has been monitoring Lehava from its inception and has filed numerous complaints, letters and petitions to the country's attorney general.


In response to a 2014 petition, the state told IRAC that a secret investigation approved by the attorney general against Lehava has been ongoing since 2012 - but that no decision whether or not to press charges has been reached.

'We don't understand why the Attorney General is so reluctant to press charges,' Ms Erez-Likhovski told MailOnline.

IRAC submitted new complaints against Lehava only last month, in February 2016, over the recent statements made by Gopstein concerning Christians.

In August 2015, just two months after an arson attack on the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes, Mr Gopstein was summoned by the police after telling a religious conference that attacks on Christian churches were legitimate due to an edict attributed to the 12th century Jewish philosopher, Maimonides.

Such statements triggered a furious reaction from The Vatican, whose representative called on Israel's Attorney General to indict the Lehava leader.

'I implore you to employ all the legal measures at your disposal,' Adv. Farid Jubran wrote on behalf of the Vatican, according to YNet News.

'Mr Gopstein's incitement puts churches and Christian communities in a clear and present danger.'

Action: Last year, Israel's defence minister Moshe Yaalon said he is considering outlawing Lehava
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Action: Last year, Israel's defence minister Moshe Yaalon said he is considering outlawing Lehava

Mr Gopstein also told The Telegraph that the Israeli government should oversee the expulsion of churches, saying they had 'no place' in Israel under Jewish law.

Just before Christmas, he also published an article in which he referred to Christians living in Israel as 'vampires' and 'blood suckers', and Christianity as an 'accursed religion,' adding that 'Christmas has no place in the Holy Land', Haaretz reported.

'The Christian is no longer considered a threatening vampire, rather a pleasant, friendly tourist and partner in the Western culture that dominates our lives,' The Times of Israel reported Gopstein as writing.

'The vampires can send a message of thanks to the government of Israel for making their work much easier.'

When asked about this by the MailOnline, Mr Gopstein claimed he was referring to Christian missionaries, not all Christians. However, when asked whether he thought Christian places of worship can remain in the holy land, Mr Gopstein said that 'All the big rabbis in Halacha (religious laws in the Torah), including Rambam,say there's no place for churches in Israel.'

The area where Gopstein says he wants ' to do more' is in the volatile tinderbox compound where the Al Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock shrine stand in the Old City Jerusalem, known as 'Temple Mount' by Jews and 'Haram al Sharif' by Muslims.

The compound is the third holiest site in Islam as well as being Palestinian national symbol, and the holiest place in Judaism, though non-Muslim prayer is banned at the site.

Over the past 12 months, regular clashes erupted on the compound prompted in part by Palestinian fears that the Jews were visiting the compound as part of a plan to assert sovereignty or to divide it. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly affirmed that there was no intention to change the status quo.

Benzi Gopstein says he wants to 'bring more Jews there.' Ultimately, Mr Gopstein says he wants Al Aqsa to be removed from the compound altogether. 'They can take it to Mecca. Or to Germany - there are lots of immigrants there. Someone I know was recently there and he said he feels like he's in Gaza when he is there.'

To this end, Mr Gopstein is confident in the work of the Temple Institute, a messianic organisation based in Jerusalem's Old City that sees as its 'ultimate goal' 'to see Israel rebuild the Holy Temple on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem, in accord with the Biblical commandments. The Temple Institute aims to build the new temple atop the Middle East's most volatile compound which houses the Al Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock shrine.

'How will it happen I don't know - but it will definitely happen,' Gopstein says.

Mr Gopstein says the popularity of Kahane's principles, is growing. 'We saw only this week that 48 per cent of Israelis support deporting Palestinians - I think it's even more than 48 per cent, but it shows that the new generation understands him [ Kahane],' while each year, more and more people attend the commemoration of his assassination.

And while Mr Gopstein himself admits that he regularly receives death threats, he says he feels himself to be popular on the Israeli street. 'I sees the reaction to us in the street - I walk on the street and people want to take selfies with me! All over the country. '

But on the streets of Jerusalem, many are angry about the group's activities.

'It's a very stupid organisation, it's anti-feminist. It's like they're saying 'Jewish girls are only for Jewish people'. It's chauvinist,' says Noam, a 26-year-old student in Jerusalem. 'They're also racist - they discriminate against everyone. Actually I think the government should forbid this kind of activity.'


'It's very worrying to see them around. They're very extreme. They tend to be very violent, especially when they hang out here,' says Hillel, 19, who serves in the army.

'One time I was having a conversation with one of them - and right next to me, they beat out a leftist, we had to c​all an ambulance.'

'They need to be shut up,' Hillel says, as two teenage Lehava activists come towards him.

'Why are you telling lies? one of the activist shouts, coming up to stand intimidatingly close to Hillel, putting his head close as if intending to head-butt him. As Hillel walks away, the teenager clenches his arm into a fist and laughs.



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3492183/Dial-1-know-Jew-going-Arab-Shocking-campaign-group-Israel-sets-hotline-attack-mixed-marriages.html