The quote from Dov Lior, the chief rabbi of the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba, was first reported by the Walla! news agency.
Rabbi Dov Lior.
(photo credit:Courtesy)
A religious Zionist cleric from a Jewish
settlement on the West Bank told mourners on Saturday during the funeral
of
an Israeli father and son gunned down by Palestinian terrorists that the
attacks in Paris were deserved due to what Europeans "did to our people 70 years ago."
The quote from Dov Lior, the chief rabbi of the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba, was first reported by the Walla! news agency.
"The wicked ones in blood-soaked Europe deserve it for what they did to our people 70 years ago," Lior said.
The
controversial rabbi once wrote an approbation for a book called The
King’s Torah that was co-written in 2009 by radical settler figure Rabbi
Yitzhak Shapira, which permitted killing civilian non-Jews in times of
war.
He was summoned by police for questioning on grounds of
incitement to violence but refused to report for questioning, saying the
Torah was not open to police investigation. He was subsequently
arrested and brought for questioning but no charges were made.
Last
year, Lior published a letter saying that Jewish law permits destroying
the entire Gaza Strip to bring peace to the south of the country.
Lior
said that he had received questions about whether Jewish law permits
harming a civilian population not directly involved with the combatants.
He
first cited the opinion of the Maharal of Prague, a renowned
16th-century rabbi, who wrote that a nation under attack can wage a
fierce war against the assaulting nation, and that it is not obligated
regarding the safety of people who are personally involved in
hostilities.
“At a time of war, the nation under attack is
allowed to punish the enemy population with measures it finds suitable,
such as blocking supplies or electricity, as well as shelling the entire
area according to the army minister’s judgment, and not to needlessly
endanger soldiers but rather to take crushing deterring steps to
exterminate the enemy,” Lior wrote.
Addressing the hostilities
with Hamas, the rabbi continued to say that “in the case of Gaza, it
would be permitted for the defense minister to even order the
destruction of all of Gaza so that the South will no longer suffer and
to prevent injury to our people, who have been suffering for so long
from the enemies surrounding us.”
“Talk of humanitarianism and
consideration are nothing when weighed against saving our brothers in
the South and across the country and the restoration of quiet to our
land,” he said.
