"God wills it!".

TWO SHOCKING MANIFESTOS were published during the second week of September 2004. Both deserve comment.

The first, published September 10 in the weekly B'Sheva newspaper, declares that dismantling Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip would be a "crime against humanity." It further states that the removal of these settlements would be an "expression of tyranny, evil, and arbitrariness" and calls upon Israeli officers and soldiers to refrain from taking part in this "ethnic cleansing." What it neglects to mention, however, is that the settlements (housing approximately 7,000 Israeli settlers) infringe on the limited, densely populated land reserves of approximately 1.3 million Palestinians crowded into the 140 square mile area and rob them of their scarce water supply.

The manifesto was signed by over 150 public figures, including Ido Netanyahu and Ben-Tzion Netanyahu (the brother and father, respectively, of Israel's former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu), Noam Livnat (brother of Education Minister Limor Livnat), and Meir Har-Zion (Ariel Sharon's legendary comrade-in-arms from Commando Unit 101, who became famous in the 1950s for personally slitting the throats of several innocent Bedouins in revenge for the killing of his sister. Two former directors generals of the Prime Minister's Office--Uri Elitzur and Yossi Ben-Aharon--also signed the statement, as did a long list of scientists, former mayors, and members of the Knesset. Most of the signatories aren't religious.

The second manifesto, also released in September, declares that the Halakha (Jewish religious law) commands the killing of innocent Palestinian civilians if this helps to save Jews. It is signed by the heads of the "Arrangement Yeshivot," the West Bank settlement rabbis, and other religious leaders. They were later joined by one of the two chief rabbis (the Sephardic one).

I was not unduly upset by the first manifesto. People of this kind can be found all over the world. In other countries they are called fascists, but, because of the Holocaust, we Israelis don't like to use this term in our country. What unites such people is a primitive, atavistic morality that identifies "we" as a superior race, God's chosen people, a master race, and so forth, while "they" are considered inferior. "We" may do to them whatever we please with a clear conscience; "they," on the other hand, aren't allowed to do anything to us at all. (In the manifesto, the settlers are requested not to do bodily harm to "their own people"--leaving them free to harm all others.) In the course of the twentieth century, such people wrought destruction on many nations, including their own. But healthy nations overcame this in the end. I hope that we shall manage to do the same.

The second manifesto is far more dangerous. A religious doctrine that calls for the killing of civilians in the name of God is very serious. Such a decree signed by the rabbis of the Arrangement Yeshivot is tenfold worse.

In order to understand this, one has to know that these Yeshivot are in fact military units. They constitute a unique phenomenon in the Israeli army: whole units formed on an ideological-political basis, obeying their own leaders.

When David Ben-Gurion created the Israeli army (officially called the Israel Defense Forces or IDF) in the middle of the 1948 war, he was determined to eliminate all its political groupings. So he disbanded the Palmakh, the legendary elite force based on the kibbutzim and tended to the left. The present set-up was created, officially, in order to enable students of Yeshivot (Jewish religious seminaries) to serve in the army without interrupting their studies. In practice, they constitute a militia of the extreme-right wing, especially the settlers. While serving in the army, the Yeshiva students are nominally under the army chain of command but in practice are also subject to their rabbis, whose position is reminiscent of the political commissars of the Red Army. If the orders of the officers and the directives of the rabbis ever conflict, the great majority of the soldier-students will undoubtedly obey the rabbis. And in any case, a great number of the officers themselves now wear kippas, attesting to their belonging to the religious camp.

The chiefs of the religious-nationalistic wing, and especially the settlers, have for years been engaged in a systematic effort to capture the Palestinian army from the inside. In the first decades of the IDF, kibbutz members had a decisive influence on the army command, but today the settlers and other religious-nationalist people are taking over. They fill the lower and middle ranks of the officer corps. This development, together with the deepening occupation, has completely changed the face of the IDF. It's a different army now.

The manifesto of the Yeshivot chiefs, calling for the killing of Palestinian civilians, exposes this situation. Since not one single head of an Arrangement Yeshiva has spoken out against it, we have to assume they are unanimous on this.

On the face of it, it's just an expert opinion. With the hypocrisy typical for the chiefs of this camp, they say that this is not an operational directive but only an innocent effort of the rabbis to explain to the leaders of the nation what the Halakha says about this subject. That is, of course, a tongue-in-cheek explanation. The Arrangement Yeshivot soldiers are engaged daily in situations where they have to decide whether or not to shoot civilians. It's quite clear that the opinion of their rabbis will determine their behavior. It's a death sentence for many people.

Even today, Palestinian civilians are killed every day. Only a small fraction of these incidents are reported in the international media. An elderly handicapped man was recently buried under the ruins of his home by an army bulldozer that demolished it so quickly his family had no chance of getting him to safety. In September, while asleep in his home, a nine-year-old boy was killed by shrapnel from a missile fired from a helicopter toward an adjacent building. Almost every day, children of all ages are killed while throwing stones at tanks and soldiers whose bullet-proof vests and helmets mean they are in little danger.

It's impossible to know how many, if any, of these civilians--men, women, elders, and children--are killed by Arrangement Yeshivot soldiers or soldiers commanded by kippa-wearing officers. Nobody can be accused without incriminating evidence. But it's clear that the interpretation of the halakha by the rabbis has now put a kosher-stamp on such acts. It puts an end to any pretence of the "pure arms" myth. It negates not only the prohibition of murder but also the shame for such acts.

The only religious voice raised against this appalling document was that of a small and courageous group called Rabbis for Human Rights, which opposes the messianic current that has submerged almost the whole religious camp in Israel. Their statement discloses that the Yeshiva heads have intentionally falsified the Talmud passages "quoted" by them. The actual text forbids a Jew to kill innocents even to save his or her own life. After all, according to religious texts, God created all human beings "in his own image" (Genesis 1:27). Unfortunately, this statement will have little or no impact on the IDF's religious militias and even less on the settlers who now set the tone in the army.

Many of the most heinous crimes in human history were committed in the name of religion. The Book of Joshua says that God commanded the children of Israel to commit a general ethnic cleansing in the land of Canaan. The crusaders carried out horrible massacres in this country and against the Jews on the way here while shouting "Deus le volt!" (God wills it). Three years ago today, Osama bin Laden sent his people to kill thousands in the New York Twin Towers in the name of Allah. May God protect us from those who would speak in His name.

Uri Avnery is a prominent Israeli peace activist.