{"id":476,"date":"2009-03-23T09:57:20","date_gmt":"2009-03-23T09:57:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/2009\/03\/the-religious-control-of-the-i.html"},"modified":"2009-03-23T09:57:20","modified_gmt":"2009-03-23T09:57:20","slug":"the-religious-control-of-the-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/03\/the-religious-control-of-the-i.html","title":{"rendered":"The Religious Control of the Israeli Army"},"content":{"rendered":"

This seriously upsetting article in the New York Times<\/a> Sunday paper chronicles the increasing influence of the religious right in Israeli’s armed forces and its affect on the execution of the war on Gaza. \u00a0Especially chilling is the quote from the Chief Rabbi of the military Gen. Avichai Rontzki who enouraged the slogan: “He is who is merciful to the cruel will end up being cruel to the merciful.” <\/span>\u00a0What a convenient little motto that can be!<\/p>\n

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It reminds one of the power that the religious right also has in the armed forces in America.<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0When religious hawks control our military mixing religious\u00a0fervor\u00a0with armed strength then every battle becomes one done in God’s name and any means justify the ends. \u00a0If every battle becomes a Holy War then we will have war without end. \u00a0Here is an excerpt from the Times article written by Ethan Bronner:<\/a>\u00a0<\/div>\n
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“The officer corps of the elite Golani Brigade is now heavily populated by religious right-wing graduates of the preparatory academies,” noted Moshe Halbertal, a Jewish philosophy professor who co-wrote the military code of ethics and who is himself religiously observant but politically liberal. “The religious right is trying to have an impact on Israeli society through the army.”<\/p>\n

For Mr. Halbertal, like for the vast majority of Israelis, the army is an especially sensitive institution because it has always functioned as a social cauldron, throwing together people from all walks of life and scores of ethnic and national backgrounds, and helping form them into a cohesive society with social networks that carry on throughout their lives.<\/p>\n

Those who oppose the religious right have been especially concerned about the influence of the military’s chief rabbi, Brig. Gen. Avichai Rontzki, who is himself a West Bank settler and who was very active during the war, spending most of it in the company of the troops in the field.<\/p>\n

He took a quotation from a classical Hebrew text and turned it into a slogan during the war: “He who is merciful to the cruel will end up being cruel to the merciful.”<\/p>\n

A controversy then arose when a booklet handed out to soldiers was found to contain a rabbinical edict against showing the enemy mercy. The Defense Ministry reprimanded the rabbi.<\/p>\n

At the time, in January, Avshalom Vilan, then a leftist member of Parliament, accused the rabbi of having “turned the Israeli military’s activity from fighting out of necessity into a holy war.”<\/p>\n

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Hmmm, moving from a war of necessity to a war of choice and one viewed through the axis of good vs evil. \u00a0Sounds familiar to me. \u00a0I am near despair over the misguided fanaticism of the religious right whether it is Christian, Jewish, Muslim or Hindu. \u00a0Enlightened religious communities and secular humanists must join together in Israel, Palestine, America, India, Pakistan, and throughout the world to counter the dogma of war and domination that we see in religious fundamentalists throughout the world. \u00a0<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This seriously upsetting article in the New York Times Sunday paper chronicles the increasing influence of the religious right in Israeli’s armed forces and its affect on the execution of the war on Gaza. \u00a0Especially chilling is the quote from the Chief Rabbi of the military Gen. Avichai Rontzki who enouraged the slogan: “He is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,15,2,9,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christians","category-jews","category-muslims","category-religion-in-the-public-square","category-war"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Religious Control of the Israeli Army - Progressive Revival<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/03\/the-religious-control-of-the-i.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Religious Control of the Israeli Army - Progressive Revival\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This seriously upsetting article in the New York Times Sunday paper chronicles the increasing influence of the religious right in Israeli’s armed forces and its affect on the execution of the war on Gaza. \u00a0Especially chilling is the quote from the Chief Rabbi of the military Gen. 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Avichai Rontzki who enouraged the slogan: “He is…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/03\/the-religious-control-of-the-i.html","og_site_name":"Progressive Revival","article_published_time":"2009-03-23T09:57:20+00:00","author":"Paul Raushenbush","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/03\/the-religious-control-of-the-i.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/03\/the-religious-control-of-the-i.html","name":"The Religious Control of the Israeli Army - Progressive Revival","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-03-23T09:57:20+00:00","dateModified":"2009-03-23T09:57:20+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/#\/schema\/person\/79cf4745abafd37be8b44cd0493ca805"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/03\/the-religious-control-of-the-i.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/03\/the-religious-control-of-the-i.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/03\/the-religious-control-of-the-i.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Religious Control of the Israeli Army"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/","name":"Progressive Revival","description":"Politics from the New Religious Progressives","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/#\/schema\/person\/79cf4745abafd37be8b44cd0493ca805","name":"Paul Raushenbush","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/8a4\/8a469b4689362184dbcd8bfb43296365x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/8a4\/8a469b4689362184dbcd8bfb43296365x96.jpg","caption":"Paul Raushenbush"},"description":"Rev. Paul B. Raushenbush is the moderator of the Progressive Revival blog and the Associate Dean of Religious Life at Princeton University. .An ordained American Baptist minister, Rev. Raushenbush speaks and preaches at colleges, churches and institutes around the country including the College of Preachers at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C., The Chautauqua Institute in upstate New York, and the New America Foundation. Rev. Raushenbush has served at Seattle First Baptist Church, the Presbyterian Chaplaincy at Columbia University and as College and Young Adult Minister at The Riverside Church in New York City. He has appeared on ABC World News Tonight and is a repeated guest on CNN. He has been quoted in The New York Times and The Washington Post and is a contributing editor for Beliefnet.com. His first book, Teen Spirit: One World, Many Faiths (HCI) was released in the Fall of 2004. He is the editor of the 100th Anniversary edition of Walter Rauschenbusch\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s book Christianity and the Social Crisis \u00e2\u20ac\u201c In the 21st Century (HarperOne). His work at Princeton includes strengthening the interfaith community on campus. He is the Co-Director of the Program on Religion, Diplomacy and International Relations at The Liechtenstein Institute on Self Determination at Princeton University. Rev. Raushenbush studied religion at Macalester College before attending Union Theological Seminary in New York City where he graduated with distinction.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/author\/praushenbush"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}