Safed Rabbi: Terrorists Must Not Be Allowed to Survive Attacks

Shas’ Council of Torah shelves letter to Netanyahu urging him to prohibit entry of Jews onto the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

Ha’aretz

The chief rabbi of Safed, Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, who has attracted attention in the past over his anti-Arab statements, called on Thursday evening for soldiers and police to be put on trial if they allow perpetrators of terrorist attacks who are then apprehended to remain alive.

In a post on his Facebook page, purportedly written in response to a question, he said that such terrorists must not be allowed to survive out of concern that they may later be released and kill again, but he added that it should be done by legal means, and if a terrorist is a “ticking bomb” who has information that will save lives, he too must remain alive.

Meanwhile, the Council of Torah Sages of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party recently shelved a letter in which it calls on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to issue a sweeping prohibition against the entry of Jews onto the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, based on the view that halakha, Jewish religious law, bars Jews from treading on the site of the two ancient temples that once stood on the site.

In an interview recorded for broadcast on Radio Kol Barama Thursday evening, one member of the Shas Council of Torah Sages, Rabbi Shimon Ba’adani, said the letter from the council was retracted out of concern that Netanyahu would not accept the request for a sweeping prohibition of Jews from entering the Temple Mount compound. He also took those Jews to task who have entered the Temple Mount compound for stirring up tensions.

“There may be other reasons,” he said regarding the escalation of tensions, “but that certainly aroused them.”

The halakhic interpretation is accepted by ultra-Orthodox religious scholars and was the view of late Sephardi Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who was the spiritual mentor of the Shas party. The Council of Torah Sages sought to raise the issue with the prime minister in light of the current escalation in tensions. Despite Netanyahu’s insistence that Israel has no intention of changing the status quo on the mount, which is under the day-to-day administration of a Muslim religious trust, the waqf, tensions have escalated over Palestinian claims that the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is on the Temple Mount, is under threat from Israel.

On Thursday, Netanyahu ordered members of his cabinet and members of the Knesset not to enter theTemple Mount. He took the step so as not to further escalate tensions rather than for the halakhic reasons embraced by ultra-Orthodox rabbis and a substantial portion of the national religious Orthodox rabbinical community.