[Updated August 5, 2014. See below]______________Israeli Professor Suggests Rape as 'Terror Deterrent'Mordechai Kedar: Sex Assault on Relatives Will Stop AttacksBy Ori Kashti • July 22, 2014Mordechai Kedar of Bar-Ilan University(Haaretz) — “The only thing that can deter terrorists, like those who kidnapped the children and killed them, is the knowledge that their sister or their mother will be raped.” This assertion was made by Middle East scholar Dr. Mordechai Kedar of Bar-Ilan University on an Israel Radio program. “It sounds very bad, but that’s the Middle East,” added Kedar, of Bar-Ilan’s Department of Arabic.The program “Hakol Diburim” (“It’s All Talk”) was broadcast on July 1, immediately after the discovery of the bodies of Gilad Shaar, Naftali Fraenkel and Eyal Yifrah, who were kidnapped and murdered in the West Bank. It dealt, among other things, with the question of how Hamas can be deterred.“You have to understand the culture in which we live,” said Kedar. “The only thing that deters [Hamas leaders] is a threat to the connection between their heads and their shoulders.” When presenter Yossi Hadar asked if that “could filter down” the organization’s ranks, Kedar replied: “No, because lower down the considerations are entirely different. Terrorists like those who kidnapped the children and killed them — the only thing that deters them is if they know that their sister or their mother will be raped in the event that they are caught. What can you do, that’s the culture in which we live.”When Hadar said, “We can’t take such steps, of course,” Kedar continued: “I’m not talking about what we should or shouldn’t do. I’m talking about the facts. The only thing that deters a suicide bomber is the knowledge that if he pulls the trigger or blows himself up, his sister will be raped. That’s all. That’s the only thing that will bring him back home, in order to preserve his sister’s honor.”Kedar is also a research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan, and in the past also served as chairman of the Israel Academia Monitor organization, which is involved in “exposing extremist Israeli academics who exploit academic freedom in order to take steps to deny Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.” The organization is engaged in a battle against professors identified with the left.In the wake of the publication of his words, feminist activists today sent a letter to Bar-Ilan University president Rabbi Prof. Daniel Hershkowitz, in which they decried Kedar’s “words of incitement that grant legitimacy to Israel Defense Forces soldiers and Israeli civilians to commit rape, and endanger both Israeli and Palestinian women. Kedar’s words echo expressions that treat rape as a remedial practice, although it is a war crime.”__________________________Michael Hoffman's Afterword:Though it will be claimed by the usual public relations hacks that Prof. Kedar's monstrous rape/deterrent observation is "condemned by the Jewish tradition" (citing, for example, BT Kiddushin 22), there are rabbinic escape clauses which justify rape. First, the rape target must be classified as a zonah (prostitute) or a nokri (hostile alien). The supreme Ashkenazic halachic authority, Rabbi Moses Maimonides, rules that a Judaic soldier may rape this type of female POW (Yefas To'ar) when he is not actively fighting a battle (cf. Hilchos Melachim 8:3). For an explication of this subject consult my book, Judaism Discovered, p. 904.Courtesy of Maurice Pinay — text from the Meorot theology journal of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinic School, giving permission to Judaic soldiers to rape a female gentile battle captive one time: “It is the consensus of many halachic decisors (judges of rabbinic law) that the yefat to’ar (female goy captive) can be subject to involuntary intercourse, though only once, after which she must undergo a specific regimen described in the Torah (Torah sheBeal peh i.e. the Mishnah and Gemara), conversion and marriage, before her captor is permitted further sexual relations with her...”— Dov. S. Zakheim, Meorot vol. 6: no. 1 (2006), p. 5. Zakheim was Under Secretary of Defense in the administration of George W. Bush, 2001-2004.One wonders how much of an outcry this rape-as-a-deterrent observation will receive from Michele Obama, from those who denounced Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin, and from big media like FOX News and the New York Times. The Times published a lengthy, front page report on July 13 concerning a small U.S. college that supposedly was negligent in investigating the rape of an intoxicated female student. Let's see what the Times has to say, if anything, about this professor who is on the faculty of Bar-Ilan, the most prestigious Talmudic educational institute in the Israeli state.August 5 Update: On August 4, the NY Times online permitted a passing reference to Kedar’s rape remarks. It appeared in the eleventh paragraph of an Op-Ed by Ali Jarbawi. The Times claims to be deeply concerned about a culture of rape on American college campuses, but took 13 days to even mention (much less report) on the Israeli professor who teaches at a heralded Talmudic university, who states on Israeli radio that raping Palestinian women is the only effective deterrent against Palestinian armed resistance. Kedar's repulsive remarks deserve a separate article, and an exposé in the Times. However, let the record show that the article by Jarbawi mentioning Kedar was not published in the print edition of the New York Times distributed in the U.S. It was published only online and in the printed International edition. It was omitted from the US print edition, which still has the majority of the readers of the Times, who will not see even a passing mention of the outrageous Israeli rape-as-a-deterrent doctrine. __________________________Michael's column is made possible by donations from readers and the sale of his books and recordings.__________________________
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