The Chabad-dominated-and-controlled SOS-Israel organization has printed an inflammatory leaflet to be distributed in synagogues across Israel tonight, tomorrow and Sunday for Rosh HaShana. It targets the outgoing chief rabbi of the IDF, Brigadier General Yisrael Weiss, who has been the subject of a prolonged campaign of harassment and threats. Ynet reports on the leaflet's contents:
"[D]uring this period of terrible days, Rabbi Weiss is resigning from his post. The rabbi will be remembered in the history of the Israeli people as 'chief military expulsion rabbi,' he cooperated with… the disengagement and helped uproot and desecrate dozens of holy graves in Gush Katif. He further sinned when he carried out the uprooting itself through desecration of the holy. The Israeli people will not forget the shocking pictures in which members of the military rabbinate and the chief rabbi are seen desecrating the honor of the head, in a way arousing contempt and revulsion."
The letter added that Rabbi Weiss took part in the disengagement plan despite the advice of rabbis: "With these acts Rabbi Weiss rebelled against the teachings of his teacher and rabbi, the revered elder Rabbi Avraham Shapira, who instructed him not to take part in the expulsion and the desecration of the dead. The acts of the chief military rabbi form a crime against Israel, and a blow to the holy values of Judaism. He and his friends were the operational arm of the wicked government that caused disaster, and the second Lebanon war."
Weiss has been attacked while praying at the Western Wall, and requires extra security, as does his family. Before anyone tries to say that Chabad doesn't sanction harassment and violence, remember the harassment and threats of violence against Rabbi Shaul Shimon Deutsch upon publication of his biography of the Rebbe, the harassment of reporters and those in the media who have reported on Chabad's foibles, and the harassment and very real violence directed against Rabbi Rivkin when he refused to capitulate to the Rebbe's demand for excommunication against an Israeli politician who Rivkin felt had done no halakhic wrong. The latter was directly incited and inspired by Menachem Mendel Schneerson himself, and it lead to the tragic death of the elderly Rivkin after a long period of unspeakable harassment and violence. And then we have the 1995 declaration a few months before the Rabin Assassination by Rabbi Abraham Hecht, the prominent Chabad rabbi and head of the Rabbinical Alliance of America, that it was permitted to murder Israeli elected leaders who cede land for peace.
When it comes to violence, Chabad may not generally adopt Satmar's street thug tactics, but it knows how to use its muscle to get what it wants, even if what it wants is wrong, and even if that muscle involves violations of Jewish, Israeli and American law.