"What he's saying is the standard normal view of a Chabadnik," Rosenberg said. "They just don't say it in public."
For his part, Friedman was quick to modify the statement that he wrote in Moment. He told the Forward that the line about killing women and children should have been in quotes; he said it is a line from the Torah, though he declined to specify from which part. Friedman also said that he was not advocating for Israel to actually kill women and children. Instead, he said, he believed that Israel should publicly say that it is willing to do these things in order to scare Palestinians and prevent war.
"If we took this policy, no one would be killed - because there would be no war," Friedman said. "The same is true of the United States."
Friedman did acknowledge, however, that in self-defense, the behavior he talked about would be permissible.
"If your children are threatened, you do whatever it takes - and you don't have to apologize," he said.
Friedman argued that he is different from Arab terrorists who have used similar language about killing Jewish civilians.
"When they say it, it's genocide, not self-defense," Friedman said. "With them, it's a religious belief - they need to rid the area of us. We're not saying that."
Feller, the Chabad leader in Minnesota, said that the way Friedman had chosen to express himself was "radical."
"I love him," Feller said. "I brought him out here - he's magnificent. He's brought thousands back to Torah mitzvah. But he shoots from the hip sometimes."
Contact Nathaniel Popper at popper@forward.com
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1091469.html




