The Beit Hillel religious-Zionist rabbinical organization has issued a statement condemning the recent footage showing right-wing extremists appearing to celebrate the Duma arson at a wedding, urging educators to take responsibility and counter the extremist discourse which helped foster such acts.
The video, published a week ago by Channel 10, shows numerous individuals - including minors - brandishing guns and knives, as well as one masked individual holding a mock-firebomb and picture of the Palestinian infant killed in the arson attack last July, and has drawn widespread criticism from Left to Right.
Police have already opened an investigation into possible incitement, as well as the apparent violation of gun laws in handing weapons to unlicensed individuals and even children.
"Like many Israelis we were shocked at the songs of revenge and the ugly wedding dance published in the media," the group said. "The terrifying addition of cold and hot weapons (i.e. knives and guns - ed.) as pictured, together with the celebration of death which took place there, requires, in our view, a deep educational process."
"As a first and symbolic step, we turn to rabbis and educators to prevent, as much as they are able to, songs of revenge... even if their origins are in Biblical verses," the group insisted.
Beit Hillel further urged "thorough introspection" on the part of religious-Zionist educators, and called on the religious education system as a whole to place greater emphasis on values such as love of mankind, "longing for peace" and "mutual responsibility."
"All levels" of the religious education system must grapple with the video, to strive to prevent students from "sanctifying death, hatred and revenge," it added, quoting
"Dealing with the enemy is entrusted to the security forces; to us it falls to adhere to the Teachings of God 'whose ways are pleasant and all its paths are peace,'" the statement concluded, quoting Proverbs 3:17.