Monday, August 01, 2005

Gang rape vs. disengagement

So, it was only a matter of time until someone came out with a statement as misguided and as callous as this one:
A rabbi has issued a halakhic ruling warning that heaven may punish police and IDF soldiers who take part in the disengagement with cancer or fatal traffic accidents.
"Taking a Jew by force from his home is a very great sin," Rabbi Moshe Tzuriel said Monday. "This is written in the Torah. When a person commits a sin, he will be punished."
Referring to a soldier or police officer who takes part or assists in the evacuations, Tzuriel told Army Radio, "Some years thereafter, if he suffers a malignant disease or a fatal road accident, everyone will know where he got it from."
Of-course, one could go on for hours about his presumption that he can read G-d's mind, the danger of mixing religion and politics and pronouncing your political opponents 'sinners,' and ask whether there really is a sin of 'taking a Jew by force from his home' in the Torah. But worst in my mind is his chutzpadik connection -- again -- between a specific illness / type of accident and an (alleged) moral vice -- the direct correlation between cancer and doing something wrong. People are suffering enough as it is from a terrible disease -- this primitive attitude, indicating it's in some way their own fault, is simply offensive, ignorant and so painful.
But all this pales into insignificance compared to his next comments:
Rabbi Tzuriel compared the disengagement to a "gang rape." Moreover, he said, "Gang rape is a one-time act. This will make people poor for their entire lives, people in their forties and fifties."
Disgusting mysogyny. He is actually claiming that being gang-raped is less harmful psychologically than being evacuated from your home -- and that being gang-raped affects someone for a limited amount of time, not for their whole lives! I don't at all belittle the psychological trauma of being forced out of your home. But to claim it is worse than being gang-raped!!!!!!!!!!!! I am simply speechless at the ignorance and the insensitivity. Furthermore, encouraging people who are being evacuated to think of disengagement in these terms is wrong and dangerous. Being forced from your home is a terrible thing -- but it is not in the same league as rape, murder or a whole host of other true callamities. People should remember that and not be encouraged to make things worse for themselves by pretending otherwise.
What makes it even worse is that Rabbi Tzuriel is a former teacher at Yeshivat Sha'alavim -- a good hesder yeshiva. What else have the students there been exposed to?