Sunday, March 22, 2009

The Devil, I Say

Imagine that:

Rabbis in the Israeli army told battlefield troops in January's Gaza offensive they were fighting a "religious war" against gentiles, according to one army commander's account published on Friday.

"Their message was very clear: we are the Jewish people, we came to this land by a miracle, God brought us back to this land and now we need to fight to expel the gentiles who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land," he said.

The account by Ram, a pseudonym to shield the soldier's identity, was published by the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper...In longer excerpts in its Friday "Week's End" edition, the daily quoted 'Ram' as saying his impression of the 22-day operation was "the feeling of an almost religious mission".

There was a "huge gap between what the Education Corps sent out and what the IDF rabbinate sent out", he said. The corps's pamphlets told the history of Israel's fighting in Gaza from 1948 to the present, but the rabbinate's message imparted the sense that "this operation was a religious war".


Can you imagine that? Rabbis promoting religion.

What will be next?

A mathematician explaining how the numbers of Qassam rockets will trigger an Israeli response?

Oops, sorry, that already happened:

Robert John Aumann is an Israeli mathematician who shared the 2005 economics prize with Thomas Schelling of the USA for “having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis”...Aumann is a proponent of a strong Israel, even quoting game theory in his arguments against the 2005 Jewish withdrawal from Gaza.


They'll next be quoting the devil.

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