Comment by judah

What a remarkably misleading copypasta you have there.

Rav Kook was not Israel's first rabbi. He died in 1935 - a full 18 years before Israel's rebirth.

Nor was Kook the founder of Zionism. The belief that Jews should be able to return to our historic homeland has been a belief and conviction for religious and secular Jews for at least two millenia.

That you can find individuals, such as a R. Friedman (not even an Israeli!) with extreme views should not surprise anyone. Nutpicking is easy. Jews, like any other group, have fools and extremists in their rank. Israel is a plural democracy with 2 million Arabs, 7 million Jews, thousands of Christians and Druze, all with representation in the multiparty Knesset.

Hamas's evil, however, is not nutpicking. Hamas' founding charter in its opening paragraphs calls for the destruction of Israel and its conquest of the land in the name of Islam. It is genuinely intrinsic to the organization.