Rabbi Wolpe, right wing Chabad extremist, plans to run for Knesset

Wolpe cannot, thankfully, be classified as a right wing Zionist, because Chabad are anti-Zionist. They want the "territories" but for their own reason.

 

Last update - 08:23 02/12/2008       
Renegade Chabad rabbi 'right of Kahane' plans run for Knesset
By Nadav Shragai

Meet Rabbi Shalom Dov Wolpe, head of the World Headquarters to Save the People and Land of Israel (SOS Israel), director of the Chabad educational institutions in Kiryat Gat, author of more than 40 books on a wide range of topics in rabbinical law and Torah and the man who a few days ago said that "the state of Israel is the enemy of the Jewish people," before softening his stance a bit. He is further to the right than the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, a person who thinks Ariel Sharon is "Haman" and a "false Messiah" and that the foreign minister is "the second Isabella," perhaps the successor to the first Isabella, who is credited with the Inquisition and the expulsion of Jews from Spain.

 

Now Wolpe, one of the heads of the Messianic faction of Chabad, is registering a new political party, "Eretz Yisrael Shelanu - A United Jewish Party for the Wholeness of the Torah, the Land and the People."

 

If he makes it past the Central Elections Committee - Peace Now has already filed a request to disqualify him - and if he survives, politically, the police investigation on suspicions of incitement, evasion of military service and disobeying orders for having given cash prizes to families of soldiers who refused to take part in the evacuation of Jews - we shall see him running for the Knesset, perhaps with Baruch Marzel of the Jewish Front, the successor to the banned Kach movement.
 
Wolpe's style and his path are not exactly the official Chabad movement's cup of tea, and in the past Chabad spokesmen have come out against him and have expressed reservations about his way and his style. But Wolpe, together with his colleague in the United States, Rabbi Yekutiel Rapp, is gaining more and more popularity, especially among the public that has decided to divorce itself from the state of Israel.

 

Wolpe himself talks about this openly in his book "Between Light and Darkness." In it, he calls upon the religious Zionists to disengage themselves from the state, because there is no proof that it is "the start of the Redemption," and proposes relating to the state as though it were British rule, as something technical. "Do not recite the prayer for the welfare of the state or the Hallel [prayer of thanksgiving] on Independence Day," he wrote. "We are in the diaspora, and we are anticipating the kingdom of the House of David."

 

Wolpe believes that the power to carry out the disengagement was given to Sharon by the same public that decided that the state of Israel is its state and that the government of Israel headed by Sharon was its government, the same public that blessed him from the depths of its heart every Sabbath before an open Torah scroll as a part of the prayer for the welfare of the state.

 

"All the limits have been reached," wrote Wolpe. "Therefore the holy one, blessed be he, has set over us a king as harsh as Haman. The holy one, blessed be he, is expecting us to internalize the truth that the establishment of the democratic state has nothing to do with the redemption, and in fact it is entirely a rebellion against the God of Israel, the Torah of Israel, the people of Israel and the land of Israel. Only when we stop believing in the sanctity of the state and its institutions will we be able to plead from the depths of our hearts: Speedily cause the offspring of David, thy servant, to flourish, and let his radiance be exalted by thy salvation."

 

In contrast to the prevailing perception in religious Zionism, Wolpe believes that Zionism and the state have in fact distanced "the beginning of the Redemption" and it appears that this was manifested most clearly at one of the SOS Israel assemblies, when a large audience sang the Neturei Karta anthem with Ariel Zilber: "We do not recognize the heretic Zionist regime and its laws do not apply to us."

 

Wolpe and his organization are the ones behind the giving of cash to soldiers and their families who refuse to take part in uprooting outposts in the West Bank and Jewish areas in Hebron. Wolpe is also the one who is behind the continuing campaign Yesh din veyesh dayan - "There is a law and there is a judge," the SOS Israel version of "Crime and Punishment." The crime is "the crime of the disengagement" and the "expulsion," and the punishment takes different forms: ousting, resignation, illness, a commission of inquiry, conviction of a crime or just plain political failure.

 

The list of the victims of the "disengagement curse" has been composed by Wolpe and his colleagues and more than a million copies have been distributed in synagogues around the country.

 

The list starts with Sharon, who has sunk into a coma in the wake of a stroke, goes on to his son Omri, who has served a prison term, enumerates a long series of public figures who were involved in the disengagement and have been harmed in one way or another and ends with the last of the afflicted: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

 

In recent years, Wolpe has become the bluntest spokesman of the extreme right, though his recent remarks about the state of Israel as "the enemy of the people" roused the ire of Rabbi Eliezer Waldman, the head of the Nir Yeshiva in Kiryat Arba, who has protested strongly against him.

 

Wolpe sees the late Lubavitch Rebbe Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson as the messiah who will be revealed in the future. Of United States President George W. Bush and Olmert he has said in the past that they are bringing about a Holocaust. In his opinion, the media are serving the enemy; the presence of Shas in Sharon's government was "a crime that will never be forgiven until the end of all generations.

 

"Anyone who gives weapons to the Palestinians is tantamount to a spiller of blood and a collaborator with the enemy and transgresses the prohibition thou shalt not stand in thy neighbor's blood," he says.

 

Wolpe might not get into the Knesset, but his influence among groups like the hilltop youth and disengagers is increasing. Alongside rabbinical figures like Rabbi Yitzhak Greenberg and Rabbi David Dudkevitz, Wolpe is acquiring a position of honor for himself.