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"I am not talking about individual people in particular. I'm talking about the state. (It) has to pain them where they scream 'Enough,' to the point where they fall flat on their face and scream 'help.' "
In June 2009, US Hasidic Rabbi Manis Friedman voiced a similar sentiment in calling on Israel to kill Palestinian "men, women and children."
"I don't believe in western morality, i.e. don't kill civilians or children, don't destroy holy sites, don't fight during the holiday seasons, don't bomb cemeteries, don't shoot until they shoot first because it is immoral. The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way: Destroy their holy sites. Kill men, women and children (and cattle)."
Views like these aren't exceptions. Though a minority, they proliferate throughout Israeli society, and are common enough to incite violence against Palestinians, even when they rightfully defend themselves as international law allows.
Religious Extremism Threatens Any Chance for an Equitable Solution to the Israeli - Palestinian Conflict
Israeli extremists are a minority but influential enough to make policy, and therein lies the threat to peace and likelihood of a sovereign Palestinian state. In his book, "A Little Too Close to God," David Horovitz recalled that before Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassination, he attended a Netanyahu-sponsored anti-Rabin rally he described as follows:
"I felt as if I were among wild animals, vicious, angry predators craving flesh and scenting blood. There was elation in the anger, elation bred of the certainty of eventual success."
In his book, "Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence," Professor Mark Juergensmeyer compared the similarities among religious-motivated extremists, whether Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh or others.
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