Friday, August 17, 2007

'Madman' Hillel Weiss

Excerpts from Hillel Weiss' Proud to be a madman

Israel faces physical annihilation from without, spiritual annihilation from within / My freedom is precious to me. My job as well. But some things are even more precious...I cannot be intimidated too much. There are too many examples in history of devotion and self-sacrifice. The real freedom is to worship God. All the rest is nonsense.


I apologized for cursing several times in most broadcasts on the day following the evacuation, and especially on Monday this week. After the widespread assault against me, one reporter told me, "But you already apologized last week." But it's not the apology they are interested in, it's my blood they are after. Me and my friends are the dam blocking the leftists' jihad against the Jews, and Jews like myself shall triumph, with God's help.

The discussion surrounding the boundaries of insubordination was not invented by the Right or the Left in Israel. Man's freedom has been earned by refusal, when just and moral. The leftist organization Yesh Gvul and the Shalem Institute on the Right have gathered and interpreted historical wirings about moral refusal. Man's honor lies in his refusal.

Just like there is a physical, eternal enemy that is threatening the Jewish people, there is a spiritual enemy that dwells in most of the Western universities, and has secured a stronghold at Bar Ilan University as well. This enemy has threatened University President Professor Moshe Kaveh with a High Court petition in order to have the university's title as a religious institution revised, based on democratic arguments. In their persecution of me they demonstrate the value of academic freedom, of freedom of speech and the democratic movement. I don’t know how the university's president managed to appease this hostile element, which I now realize has succeeded in shattering the moral backbone of those who signed the petition against me.

...Under the current circumstances, I am proud to be a madman. Yes, there are times when an honest man belongs in jail...

...I do not know how the witch hunt against me will end, but I wish to say that the Israeli authorities' abuse of Pollard has set a very high price tag for self-sacrifice. If I suffer even the smallest fraction of the burden of revealing the betrayal as he did, this would not be a surprise. The champions of democracy are capable of adopting, either freely or forcefully, any dictatorship.


P.S. Here's Rabbi Yuval Sherlo's position:-

Precisely because of a moral position based on Jewish law, it is our obligation to save the duty of insubordination to those rare times where this is truly a duty, and to those cases where there is indeed no point to the existence of government institutions if those are the decisions they make.

Insubordination is a worthy deed when we find ourselves in a situation where it's better to topple everything as long as the terrible order does not remain intact. Any other use of this moral principle, and particularly when we're talking about cases that are very far removed from the ones dealt with by various refuseniks, creates two grave injustices: Firstly, it erodes the duty of refusal and deteriorates it into a political manipulations. Secondly, it creates a moral injustice in the face of other considerations on the opposing side of the issue.

Therefore, the weapon or refusal must be taken out of the arsenal of tools used in our very just struggle for getting back the stolen Jewish property in Hebron. This kind of insubordination is a deed whose morality is somewhat distorted and it is being undertaken without genuinely examining the conscience, particularly when this is done as a collective act.

The very moral struggle for settlement in Hebron must be undertaken morally.

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