US donations funding radical settlers and extreme yeshivas in the settlements

For years, many bloggers and journalists including myself, Phil Weiss, Didi Remez, Akiva Eldar and David Ignatius have been calling for cutting off tax-deductible donations to radical settlers, settlements and the organizations that support them. The NY Times reported that total giving to such groups reached $200 million over a number of years. As far as the Obama administration and the IRS, it’s fallen on deaf ears. Now, perhaps the most credible source imaginable has weighed in in favor of the proposition: the Shin Bet:

The army’s GOC Central Command, Maj. Gen. Avi Mizrahi, recently issued restraining orders that forbid several students affiliated with the yeshiva to enter the West Bank. This decision was based on what security sources termed well-founded suspicions that these students had been involved in attacks on Arabs, including “price tag” attacks on Arab property (so-called because they seek to deter the army from razing houses in the settlements ) and the torching of mosques in nearby Palestinian villages.

The head of the yeshiva, Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, was filmed in the past accompanying some of his students to a nearby Arab village; the students then threw stones while the rabbi looked on. Shapira is the author of the controversial work “The King’s Torah,” which, among other things, discusses circumstances under which Jewish law might permit the killing of non-Jews.

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