Dov Lior (Hebrew: דב ליאור, born 1933) is an Israeli rabbi, who currently serves as the Chief Rabbi of Hebron and Kiryat Arba in the southern West Bank. He is also the rosh yeshiva Kiryat Arba Hesder Yeshiva, and also heads the "Council of Rabbis of Judea and Samaria".
Contents |
He was born to a Belz hasidic family, son to Moshe Leibland in Breslau, Silesia. He attempted to board the Exodus, eventually arriving on the Negba a few weeks before the establishment of the State of Israel, where he changed his surname to the Hebrew Lior. In Israel he first studied at the Bnei Akiva Kfar HaRoeh high school yeshiva, and then at Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook's Mercaz haRav yeshiva, where owing to Lior's being an orphan, the Rabbi treated him like a son. Lior married Bitya in 1960. She died of cancer in 1988. He later married Esther, widow of Rabbi Ephraim Shahor. Lior has 11 children, 55 grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. Two of his brothers arrived in Israel after him and joined the Hashomer Hatzair kibbutz HaMa'apil.
Lior is a Religious Zionist leader and student of Zvi Yehuda Kook, son of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. In the late 1980s the Attorney General barred Lior’s election to the Supreme Rabbinical Council following a public outcry over his remarks that captured Arab terrorists could be used in medical experiments.[1] After the Mercaz HaRav massacre, he said it was forbidden by Jewish law to employ or rent homes to Arabs.[2][3]
In 2007, Dov Lior attended the dedication of Beit HaShalom and gave his blessings to the local Jewish community.[1] In 2008, Lior and other right-wing rabbis declared the government's policies on Israeli settlements to be "worse than the British Mandate's White Paper."[4]
In Israel's general elections, Lior supported the National Union and was a key figure in the break-up of The Jewish Home, formed to create a united political front for all religious Zionists.
In 2009, he denounced the possible transfer of jurisdiction of Christian sites in Israel to the Holy See, saying it was "unthinkable to hand over to the Vatican any piece of our holy land".[5]
in 2011, Lior was called in for interrogation by Israeli police about controversial statements attributed to him in a foreword written by him for the book of a colleague. He agreed to be questioned at his home but the police issued a warrant for his arrest which sparked wide condemnation in religious right wing circles.
Lior has legitimized killing non-Jews during wartime. He asserted that Jewish women should not use sperm donated by a non-Jewish man and a baby born through such an insemination will have the 'negative genetic traits that characterize non-Jews' and that 'Gentile sperm leads to barbaric offspring'."[6]
Leading rabbis have testified that Lior was the source of rulings labeling the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin a "rodef" and a "moser" (a traitor who endangers Jewish lives ). Rabin's assassin was known to have visited Lior. Baruch Goldstein also met with Lior. After he opened fire on Arab worshipers at the Cave of the Patriarchs, Lior described Goldstein as "holier than all the martyrs of the Holocaust."[7]
In June 2011 Lior was arrested by Israeli police and questioned on suspicion of inciting violence. Lior had been summoned for questioning by authorities, but refused to appear. Spontaneous demonstrations erupted in and around Jerusalem as outraged supporters assembled in various parts of the city and on Route 1 to protest Lior's arrest. Israeli chief rabbis Yona Metzger and Shlomo Amar condemned the arrest as a "grave offense to an important rabbi's honor," and 25 members of Knesset signed a petition denouncing it as "shameful" and as having been orchestrated by Deputy State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan. Lior was released after an hour of questioning.[8][9]
Both opposition leader Tzipi Livni and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for a full judicial investigation of Lior's remarks and said that rabbis were not above the law.[10]
In September 2011, he stated that Arabs are 'evil camel riders'.[11]