Israel/Palestine

Israel’s Anti-gay Rabbi Is the Fundamentalist Monster Among Us

How is it that as the Western democracies struggle to improve the war on fundamentalism, we bow our heads to it, bring it into the army, fund it and subsidize it?

Uri Misgav Jul 21, 2016

I’d like to explain once and for all what I feel about Rabbi Yigal Levinstein. I think a great many decent Israelis feel as I do, and I hope to be able to speak for them. I’d like to do this unbound by the strictures of political correctness;  those strictures only ever apply to one side anyway.

(snip)

His worldview is clear and comprehensive. It doesn’t only include gay people. He has a whole doctrine. His doctrine patently and knowingly upends the basic foundations of society and the army in a democratic country, and seeks to undermine it.

I consider him a direct threat to me and everything I hold dear. I have no dialogue with him, no bridge, no shared fate. What do I have in common with him? He’s a son of the Kingdom of Judah and I’m a citizen of the State of Israel.

When I see Levinstein, I understand for the umpteenth time that while I was growing up, going to school, serving in the army, traveling the world, attending university, making a living, paying taxes, establishing a home and raising children, a fundamentalist monster was growing in my backyard.

read more: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.732637