- Jerusalem Magistrate's Court Judge Noam Solberg on Wednesday
proposed that Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg explicitly and publicly retract his
offensive statements about Arabs, in return for an end to all criminal
proceedings against him.
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- Ginsburg, a member of the Chabad Lubavitch Hasidic movement,
and a former head of a yeshiva in the West Bank city of Nablus, was indicted
in July on charges of encouraging racism against Arabs in his book, "Tsav
Hasha'a - Tipul Shoresh" ("Order of the Day - Radical Treatment"),
which was published in 2001.
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- According to the proposal, Ginsburg would publicly announce
a retraction of his inciteful statements and state his support for social
and political equal rights to all the state's citizens, regardless of religion,
race or gender. Ginsburg, through his attorney Naftali Wurzberger, said
he would consider the proposal.
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- Among others, the charges cite a conversation in the
book between Ginsburg and a student. The student asks: "So an Arab
has no right to exist in Israel?" Ginsburg replies: "Here in
the Land of Israel, he has no right."
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- In another place in the book the student asks: "What
is the rabbi's opinion about the Arabs as a nation and a people, as our
enemies and our foes?"
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- Ginsburg replies: "There is something called the
Third World or another name for more primitive nations. Clearly, they are
lower on the world's cultural ladder; but the murderousness and anti-Semitism
are not a function of primitiveness, since the Germans were the most enlightened
and educated and also the most bestial in every way."
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- In the past, Ginsburg had praised the massacre carried
out in 1994 by Baruch Goldstein, who killed 29 Muslim worshipers at the
Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron.
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- Ginsburg had declared that Goldstein's deed constitutes
"a fulfillment of a number of commandments of Jewish law...[including]
taking revenge on non-Jews."
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- He was held in administrative detention for a period
of two months in 1996 for his pronouncements, but the State Prosecution
decided not to charge him and let him go.
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- http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/357602.html
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