Frank wrote on Jul 5
th, 2026 at 12:08pm:
Academic critics argue Shahak cherry-picks isolated Talmudic or Halakhic passages—often extreme or localized responses—and presents them as representative of Judaism as a whole.
Israel Shahak responds Stefan Bialoguski thinks that intellectual and often public terror employed in the USA and other countries against Jews who speak the truth about Judaism, whether in the form it took after the inception of the Talmud or its continuation in Orthodox Judaism, will succeed against an Israeli Jew like me.
Contrary to the great majority of American Jews, Israeli Jews enjoy three great advantages with regard to the freedom of expression on Jewish issues: they read Hebrew and can read Halacha and other Jewish documents in the original, and are not dependent on the falsehoods circulated about those by rabbis and Jewish organizations.
They see, with the help of their Hebrew press, whose behavior is much more honest when reporting Jewish issues than the American one, what Orthodox rabbis (almost all Israeli rabbis are Orthodox) do when they have political power, and many of them noted long ago the close resemblance the Orthodox rabbis bear to the Ayatollahs in their aims, and also the close resemblance between the Halacha and the religious law now established in Iran. I have no doubt that had the common Israeli slogans “Israel will not be an Iran” or “Israel will not be ruled by Jewish Ayatollahs” – meaning the rabbis – been raised in the USA, American defenders of Jewish zealotry and discrimination if directed against non-Jews, would have protested as strongly against such typical Israeli slogans as they do against “Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel”.
Let me add that increasing numbers of Israeli Jews are beginning to see that it would be a very good thing for Israel if something similar to the First Amendment to the USA Constitution would become the law in the State of Israel. Even the Israeli Jews who did not yet adapt this view usually despise the American Jews who want to carry the separation of the church from the state to its greatest extent in the USA (because they think it is in the Jewish interest) and vehemently oppose it in Israel (because they think that in this case it is against the Jewish interest).
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the secular part of the Israeli Jews has been educated, to a large extent, on Prophetic books of the Old Testament, and its other parts such as the Psalms, which contrary to the Talmudic literature, attack especially what the great majority of the Jews regarded as authoritative when this literature was composed. Therefore for us, the secular Israeli Jews, to attack Jewish institutions and laws, even when hallowed by time, and to use the sharpest language while doing so, as the Prophets and other Jewish poets preserved in the Old Testament did when criticizing Jews (usually they used much sharper language than I am using), is the most normal thing; it is something which preserves our freedom and our sense of continuity as Jews.
Let me add that the best hope of better future in the Middle East lies in all its peoples criticizing their religions, customs and past. Continuing to be enslaved to the past leads to the perpetuation of all conflicts...
The beginning of any struggle for justice in the Middle East must be recognition of the fact that for the last 52 years Zion, that is the State of Israel, has been built with blood, mainly of the Arabs, and founded on the most horrifying forms of injustice which when applied to the Jews are rightly condemned as anti-Semitism. Let me give here give only a single example, before entering Halachic argument. During 18 years of Israeli occupation of Lebanon about 25,000 Lebanese and Palestinians lost their lives as compared with about 800 Israeli soldiers. It is a significant fact of Israeli politics that numbers of non Jews killed in Lebanon had little or no influence on Israeli decisions to leave it, even when they were members of the South Lebanese Army, allied with Israel. On the other hand, the relatively small numbers of killed Jewish soldiers were the chief factor, even in the eyes of Israeli organizations calling for withdrawal, to mobilize the Jewish public opinion and force the government to withdraw.
The great majority of the Orthodox and traditional Jews (in the USA even more than in Israel) is quite indifferent to numbers of non-Jews killed by Jews, while it is very sensitive to a single Jew killed by non-Jews. The same happens with discrimination: there is very little, if any protest from the great majority of Orthodox and traditional Jews when Jews discriminate against non-Jews, in our case the Arabs, together with screams of fury against any hint of discrimination (or abuse) against the Jews themselves.
Surely, such an attitude by a public so devoted to the worship of the Jewish past must be influenced by that past. As I have shown (especially in my book “Jewish history, Jewish religion”; Chapter 5 “The Laws Against Non Jews”), this attitude derives from the many Halachic laws against non-Jews.
After this necessary preface, let me answer in some detail the accusations made...
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