Rabbi Yaakov Medan
Rabbi Yaakov MedanYosef Mizrachi/Arutz Sheva

Har Etzion hesder yeshiva Rosh Yeshiva Rabbi Yaakov Medan, a leading figure in the Religious Zionist community, warned that recent extreme right violence against Arabs in Judea and Samaria, and the silence from settler and rabbinic leaders in the face of this violence, will bring great harm to the entire Jewish community of Judea and Samaria.

Rabbi Medan noted that the fast of Tisha B'Av, marking the anniversary of the destruction of the Holy Temples and Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel, was held last week, and that the Talmudic story of Kamsa and Bar Kamsa, which provides an explanation for why the Second Temple was destroyed, is highly critical of the silence of that generation's great rabbinical leaders. The rabbis were silent in the face of an injustice inflicted on an accidental party guest due to their "humility."

"Last week there was a serious riot against Bedouins from Rahat who accidentally entered Givat Ronen at the foot of Har Bracha. A few days later there was a particularly severe riot in the village of Jit in Samaria, a riot that ended in blood," he said.

He noted, "The riot was probably a reaction to throwing stones at a Jewish vehicle, but the Arab victims of it were not necessarily the stone throwers. These riots, apart from the moral problem inherent to them and also the added burden on the security forces who are overworked in the task of protecting Jewish lives, were photographed and published throughout the world. The desecration of God's name caused by them, and with it the comparison of the settlers in Judea and Samaria to Hamas, cause us damage of indescribable magnitude."

He warned that these riots may "quickly result in the economic boycott of everything that moves in Judea and Samaria" and that "at the current rate, it will not be far off today that all settlers may be sanctioned by Europe as 'war criminals.'"

"All of this could have been saved if the voices of the public in Judea and Samaria, that is, the rabbis of the communities and the heads of the councils, had publicly protested what happened, if explicit requests had been submitted to the commanding general to remove the rioters from Judea and Samaria. In reality, three heads of councils publicly protested. It helped, but not enough. There are rabbis who talked about it in their communities but did not protest publicly because of their humility, and the battlefield was entirely ceded to the haters of the settlements in Israel and throughout the world.

"If many council leaders in Judea and Samaria and many rabbis and public figures would put pressure on the commanding general to get the rioters out of here and denounce them continuously in front of the entire public and in all media, we will be able to fight the global boycott against us. In this way we will also atone for the desecration of God's name caused by our silence until now," Rabbi Medan concluded.