Prof. Yakov Rabkin reads the riot act to Zionism in Galway

galway | rights, freedoms and repression | news report

Monday December 11, 2006 03:33

by JD - Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign

"The rapprochement activities of the Jews who reject Zionism tend to undercut the image of an intrinsically evil enemy and to show that one can talk with the other side"

Prof. Yakov M. Rabkin, lecturer in contemporary Jewish history, Soviet history and the history of science at the University of Montreal since 1973 and practising Orthodox Jew, tonight laid bare the provenance of Zionism in Russia and voiced his opposition to it, full blown, in Israel

When Zionism, we were told, began to take root at the turn of the 20th century, most rabbinic authorities saw it as a dangerous tool to tear the Jews away from Torah and its commandments.

Prof. Yakov

In the words of Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchek quoted by Prof. Yakov in another forum : “The Zionists do not drive Jews away from the Torah in order to get a state they need a state to drive Jews away from the Torah. Prof. Yakov admitted that numerically, the Judaic opposition to Zionism may seem negligible, but that Jewish history shows that rigorous minorities tend to prevail in the end.

The Professor pointed out that many religious Jews abhor Zionism and its overwillingness to resort to violence and some demonstrated against Israel's recent invasion of Lebanon and that Neturei Karta members prayed at Yassar Arafat's bedside, toured the Hezbollah's territory in Lebanon and met with the current Iranian president and regularly demonstrate alongside Palestinians against the very existence of the Zionist state eliciting virulent Zionist criticism.

Professor Rabkin admitted that present day nuclear armed Israel seems monolithic and unassailable but things change for the better and the relatively peaceful attenuation of the power of the Soviet Union was used as an example, also Leonard Cohen's inspiring : "There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.”

Prof. Yakov is off to Brussels tomorrow where an audience of 400 awaits him, to boot, his book has already been translated into six languages with "another few on the way." It seems this sweet gentle man is the light Cohen speaks of ?.

Section of the assembly