Extermination Camps for Palestinians?

Anyone publicly advocating the use of extermination camps and genocide to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, at least in Britain, would be rightly declared criminal. That these views would ever emanate from a religious leader is utterly reprehensible. That they might be advocated by a Jewish rabbi is totally incomprehensible. Yet the government of Israel apparently funds their ministry.

This is the claim made by Richard Silverstein in Israel's Orthodox Rabbi's 'Palestinians to the Ovens' and by Tony Greenstein in Arabs to the Ovens

Greenstein writes,

In a ‘family magazine' Fountains of Salvation,of what Richard Silverstein calls the radical, right-wing Orthodox rabbinate, an article appears advocating placing the Amalekites, a code for the Palestinians, in death camps. That such an article can appear should not be surprising, as I’ve been detailing for some time things like the appearance of graffiti (in Hebron of course) saying ‘Arabs to the gas chambers’

What we are seeing today is the culmination of Zionism. It has shed its ‘left wing’ which used the phraseology of socialism whilst expelling and massacring the Palestinians, and the appearance of an openly racist and neo-Nazi Orthodox Rabbinate in Israel. What is remarkable is how they use the symbols and imagery of the holocaust, not of course to warn against the evils of racism or even racism against Jews but as a justification for repeating the same to the Arabs.

Rabbi Dov Lior is a well-known figure in Israel. He is not an isolated maverick. He is the Chief Rabbi of Hebron and Kiryat Arab settlers. He is also a leading scholar of the Religious Zionist camp and reportedly the favourite student of the late Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, son of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. Avraham Cook is revered by the whole religious camp in Israel and acknowledged as the founder of religious Zionism. In his 'honour' the rabidly racist bastion of religious Zionism, the yeshiva of Mercaz Harav was founded in Jerusalem in 1924.

Silverstein concludes quite rightly,

Finally, since I know people of all ideological stripes may read into this story what they wish, I want to make clear that this is not Judaism.  These wicked men may be Jews and rabbis, but they don’t represent normative Judaism any more than Osama bin Laden represents normative Islam.  Do not make the mistake of conflating this idiocy with all of Israel or all of Judaism.  Yes, these men are dangerous, they are hateful, and they must be challenged.  But there is another face of Judaism and another face of Israel (though that is becoming increasingly difficult to see I concede).

Amen.