RAMALLAH, October 25 (JMCC) - A radical Israeli rabbi and leader in the settler movement has advocated for the killing of Palestinian attackers, arguing that their arrest will likely end in release,
writes the Jerusalem Post.
Yossi Elitzur, a leader at the religious school in the settlement of Yitzhar, argued that the recent prisoner swap in which Israel released hundreds of Palestinians in exchange for captive soldier Gilad Shalit showed that prison terms are too light.
In this case, the author of a similarly controversial book on Jewish law stated that a Jew can take the law into his own hands.
Writing on the Kol Yehudi website, Elitzur said that the imagined, although “not unrealistic” situation is a relevant issue in Jewish law “following the [recent] release of numerous murderers and a number of attempted terrorist attacks” since the Schalit prisoner-exchange deal was completed last week.
“When the state apparatus broadcasts in an unequivocal manner that there is almost no price to be paid for shedding Jewish blood, it is not clear if it’s a good idea to let the police take care of these issues,” the rabbi wrote.
“At the very least, if there is a window of opportunity in which you can claim selfdefense so that the [legal] framework won’t be overtly damaged, it is better to kill the terrorist and so raise the price of Jewish blood, which has been continually cheapened.”
However, Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, head of the Ateret Yerushalayim yeshiva in the Old City of Jerusalem and a leading religious-Zionist figure, told The Jerusalem Post that a private citizen should not take the law into their own hands in this manner.
“Only the police can decide to do such a thing, not a private individual,” he said.