Yes, I've called Rick Santorum a theocrat, and he does scare me, but you know, American's extremists are really pretty mild when compared to those in other places. I know we've written about Israel constantly in these forums, but David Remick had a short piece in the New Yorker that caught my eye:

Elyakim Levanon, the chief rabbi of the Elon Moreh settlement, near Nablus, says that Orthodox soldiers should prefer to face a “firing squad” rather than sit through events at which women sing, and has forbidden women to run for public office, because “the husband presents the family’s opinion.” Dov Lior, the head of an important West Bank rabbinical council, has called Baruch Goldstein—who, in 1994, machine-gunned twenty-nine Palestinians at the Cave of the Patriarchs, in Hebron—“holier than all the martyrs of the Holocaust.” Lior endorsed a book that discussed when it is right and proper to murder an Arab, and he and a group of kindred rabbis issued a proclamation proscribing Jews from selling or renting land to non-Jews. Men like Lieberman, Levanon, and Lior are scarcely embittered figures on the irrelevant margins: a hard-right base—the settlers, the ultra-Orthodox, Shas, the National Religious Party—is indispensable to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2 ... z1oqBJYnLG


Rick Santorum's got nothing on these guys. When it comes to political extremists, the Middle East goes all the way. And of course, Israeli extremists are mild compared to the Al Qeda ilk. But with these guys and their power within the gov't, it makes me wonder, what is the biggest threat to democracy in Israel? Iran, or some other outside pressure, or pressures from within? I don't know, but it can't be good to have people with views like this as part of the government.