AFP/Jerusalem
Israeli police arrest right-wing Jewish settlers after they blocked the main road leading into Jerusalem yesterday during clashes following a protest against the brief arrest earlier of Rabbi Dov Lior
Israeli police briefly detained a leading settler rabbi yesterday in connection with an investigation into a book justifying the killing of non-Jews in some cases, police said.
Several months ago, police issued an arrest warrant for Rabbi Dov Lior, the chief rabbi of Kiryat Arba and the settlements in Hebron on the West Bank, after he failed to present himself for questioning in an incitement probe.
“Rabbi Lior was detained and questioned for about one hour before being released,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said, saying he had been quizzed over his endorsement of a book called The King’s Torah which said it was permissible to kill non-Jews.
In a rare demarche sparked by the arrest, Israel’s two grand rabbis issued a joint statement denouncing it.
“We deplore this grave offence against the honour of one of the most important rabbis and leaders of religious opinion,” Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yona Metzger and Chief Sephardic Rabbi Shlomo Amar said.
Lior, who also heads the Council of Rabbis of Judea and Samaria, Israel’s term for the West Bank, is one of the main spiritual ideologists of the settlement movement.
Right-wing activists immediately called on supporters to gather outside various police headquarters to protest, and Rosenfeld said several youths briefly blocked the main highway leading into Jerusalem from the west.