Far right-wing rabbi praises Netanyahu's South Tel Aviv visit
The rabbi, who once wrote in praise of Baruch Goldstein, also encouraged Netanyahu to implement religious law in place of civil law.
By JEREMY SHARONUpdated: SEPTEMBER 4, 2017 05:14Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg(photo credit: WIKIMEDIA)
Far-right leader Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg praised Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday for his visit to South Tel Aviv, where he promised to remove asylum seekers and alleged illegal immigrants from the city.Ginsburg’s comments were made in the context of several High Court of Justice rulings against government legislation which have prevented the state from indefinitely incarcerating asylum seekers and, most recently, ruled that any such person refusing to leave to a third country can only be held in detention for 60 days.The rabbi also called on the prime minister to institute a Torah-based legal system as a long-term solution for excising the influence of the courts.Derech Haim, an organization headed by Ginsburg, was responsible for erecting a golden statue of Supreme Court President Miriam Naor outside the Supreme Court on Thursday in protest at the court’s frequent interventions on this and other issues.“I was happy to hear that during your visit yesterday [Thursday] to South Tel Aviv you expressed solidarity with the residents of the neighborhood, while understanding that the factor preventing the rectification of the situation is the Supreme Court which is imposing its opinion on the Jewish people and preventing substantive legislation on infiltrators (and many other issues),” wrote Ginsburg.The rabbi also expressed his opinion as to how to provide a permanent answer to High Court intervention in matters of public policy.“Fundamental reform for leading the nation [requires] basing the legal system on the eternal values of the Torah of the Jewish people and in accordance with Hebrew law,” adding that “the majority of the Jewish people have faith in God and the justness of His Torah.”He added “At the very least, we should make sure that the minority does not control the majority as is the case today.”Ginsburg, president of the radical Od Yosef Hai Yeshiva in the Yitzhar settlement, has long advocated for hard-line policies against the Palestinians, and in 2003 was charged with incitement to racism against Arabs over his book Order of the Day – Get to the Root of the Problem, although the charges were dropped after he issued a letter of clarification.The rabbi also wrote a chapter in a book praising Baruch Goldstein, who massacred 29 Palestinians in the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron in 1994.
