The rabbi of the Old City of Jerusalem, Avigdor Neventzal, announced in June that anyone who gives up a part of the land of Israel -- even a single settlement -- to a non-Jew could be the target of a religiously sanctioned murder. And that includes Ariel Sharon, says Jeffrey Goldberg in Protect Sharon from the Right, an Op Ed piece the New York Times ran yesterday.

I'm no fan of Mr. Sharon. I don't like Mr. Sharon's policies (I believe a two-state solution is the only path to peace, and would prefer sacrificing land to sacrificing more lives; I applaud the IDF refuseniks) and I don't like his attitude, either (urging all French Jews to make aliyah was unconsidered at best, and I can see why M. Chirac was offended).

But that doesn't mean I want to see the guy killed. Come on, people: if you don't like a politician, you vote him out of office. You don't assassinate him. Didn't we learn anything from the murder of Yitzhak Rabin? Using religion as a tool to motivate killing is appalling, and that's true whether we're talking about extremist Palestinians advocating suicide bombings or extremist Israelis advocating assassinations.

The Orthodox radicals who want to see Sharon dead would apparently also like to see the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock destroyed, too. Mr. Goldberg notes that this would set off global war between Muslim and Jew -- a goal the radical yeshivas of the West Bank share with Al Qaeda. That this kind of malicious, short-sighted hatred comes out of a branch of Judaism breaks my heart. I hate to see it from Al Qaeda, too...but somehow it's worse coming from people who are nominally related to me, who claim a place in the faith-tradition to which I belong.

I'm reminded again of that wonderful piece that ran in The Onion right after 9/11, in which God plaintively asked humanity, "What part of 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' did you not understand?"