During this season of Hanukkah, it is particularly sad to see extremely disturbing acts of violence in the modern Jewish State of Israel by Jews against fellow Jews. While the holiday celebrates the victory of Maccabeans against their enemies, the historic echoes of subsequent internal Jewish strife in ancient Judea pervade the news emanating from the West Bank.

Last week, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch carried a McClatchy story by Sheera Frenkel headlined, “Right wing is new headache for the Israelis,” reporting on the “spate of attacks by Jewish extremists,” which has called into question whether Israel’s definition of the word “terrorist” should include Jews as well as Palestinians.

Extremist members of various West Bank settlements have described demolitions by Israel Defense Force soldiers, acting on behalf of the government, as amounting to a “declaration of war.” Frenkel reports on “a young man calling himself Yehudi Tzadik-‘righteous Jew’-(having) picked up a rock and rolled it around in his hand, as if considering pitching it at a police car parked nearby.” Tzadik, who gave his real first name only as David, said, “The State of Israel has lost its moral code. It has forgotten what is at the heart of the Jewish nation…We are reminding them.”

The statements by “Tzadik” are absurd.  It is he and other extremists among the Jewish settler community in the West Bank who have lost semblance of a moral code, the code reflected in the laws of the State of Israel. 

Israeli police and members of the IDF have been carrying out the orders of the democratically elected Israeli government to remove settler outposts that are clearly beyond the area long understood to be available for the establishment of new communities.

Last Thursday morning, Israeli soldiers destroyed several structures on a small outpost near the Jewish settlement of Yitzhar, which is on a hilltop adjacent to the Palestinian city of Nablus, because they had been built on private Palestinian land. Even the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which has green- lighted a number of previous settlement expansions, drew a line in this instance, only to be met with threats of violence by Jewish extremists among the settlers.

These incidents have prompted discussions among Israeli officials as to whether or not the term “terrorist” and the lawful responses against terrorism should apply equally to violence instigated by Jews.  Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, the most decorated military hero in the history of Israel, minced no words in his response to the attacks and violence. “These things both endanger human life and distract from the Israel Defense Forces’ main mission,” Barak told Israeli Army Radio. “In terms of their conduct, there is no doubt that this is the conduct of terrorists-terrorism, albeit Jewish.”

Barak deserves credit for his clear and unequivocal denunciation of actions by Jewish extremists as amounting to “terrorism.” In a workable democracy, there cannot be different standards of tolerance applied based on the identity of the perpetrator. We recall the massacre of Muslim worshippers at the Tomb of the Patriarchs mosque in 1994 and the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 as painful reminders that Jews sometimes indeed commit acts of terrorism-and deserve to be punished to the limit of the law.

Throughout Jewish history, internal splits have at times been as destructive as outside threats, and the fallout from our Hanukkah commemoration reflects that. The Hasmonean State of Judea, founded by the Maccabees after the first Hanukkah in 167 BCE, was beset in later years by factional disputes and corruption, which

ultimately led to its collapse. The period just before the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in the year 70 C.E., was an era of deep divisions within the Jewish community, which left it weak and vulnerable to the outside threats which eventually led to its horrific destruction.

The modern State of Israel-and the world Jewish community-cannot afford an escalating period of violent attacks by Jews against their fellow Jews or their neighbors. Such behavior fails Jews on two fronts, eroding both democratic principles and Jewish unity.

Hanukkah is remembered not only as the Festival of Lights, but as the Festival of Rededication, and Jews in Israel and around the world should re-dedicate themselves to the concept of K’lal Yisrael-every Jew being responsible for the well-being of every other Jew. If Israel is indeed supposed to be “a Light unto the Nations,” it must live up to its moral code and that of the Jewish People.