Chabad rabbi and political activist Rabbi Shalom Dov Wolpe said Thursday that a speech he gave at a recent “SOS Israel” event was twisted and taken out of context. When he said that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Vice Premier Chaim Ramon, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, and other members of the government would be hung, he was not calling for vigilante violence, he said, but rather calling on the police to implement the law.
Rabbi Wolpe wrote a clarification, explaining that he believes violence against a fellow Jew is unacceptable, but that law enforcement has the right and responsibility to enforce the law. One of Israel’s laws prohibits providing assistance to Nazis, he said, and Muslim terrorist groups are the Nazis of our day. If the government provides terrorists with aid, the government has violated the law, and must suffer the consequences, which include the death penalty. Rabbi Wolpe emphasized that he was calling for any such punishments to be carried out in a legal manner.
Members of the leftist Peace Now group expressed outrage after Rabbi Wolpe’s speech, and called on the Supreme Court to put him on trial. MK Chaim Oron (Meretz) went a step further, saying all activists belonging to the Chabad chassidic group should be banned from IDF bases.