The editor of the haredi newspaper Yated Neeman, Yisrael Friedman, claims that the basis for the dastardly assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin z'l stemmed from a warped understanding of Judaism which is reminiscent of the behavior of Reform Jews.
"Yigal Amir may not be a member of the Reform movement," wrote Friedman in an article published Tuesday, "But if he found a way to uphold his act based on Jewish sources, this is a Reform Movement way of thinking. What is the Reform Movement? An attempt to adapt the Torah to fit the reality that 'I can understand'. To subordinate an immutable Torah to what 'I think is right'. If it doesn't fit in with the value system I have created, it should just be erased! This is the basis of Reform and if Amir acted as he understood Judaism and murdered Rabin, that in itself is reform-type behavior."
Friedman compared the two approaches and maintained that any deviation from the accepted path stems from one common denominator. "It is the same distortion which caused those who wish to change and trample halakha to enter the women's section and to desecrate the sanctity of the Western Wall, the same logic which causes them to adapt the principles of conversion to their own needs and interpretations - if he relied on the Torah and distorted it for his own needs, that too is reformist behavior.
"Obviously one cannot compare the severity of the two actions. The Reform movement is not murder and they do not condone murder but the thought process is similarly warped. If one wantonly misinterprets an immutable Torah, you know where it begins but you never know where it will end. If it is 'permitted' for you to distort the Torah for your own needs, don't complain when someone else does the same thing for his own motives and finds alternative interpretations.
"The head of the coalition (David Bitan) was right, this was not a political assassination. It was an assassination based on reformist principles by one who had been brainwashed by his nationalism into believing that one can abandon eternal values and adopt foreign values when necessary and place them 'above everything', that one can twist the Torah according to his needs and personal interpretation, G-d forbid," concluded Friedman.