The Forward has a piece on Chabad rabbi Sholom DovBer Wolpe's call for the murder of Prime Minster Olmert and other leading Israeli politicians including Tzipi Livini, Haim Ramon, and Ehud Barak.
First, Rabbi Wolpe stands by his call for murder:
…In an interview with the Forward last Tuesday, Wolpe stood by his comments, adding that they were an acceptable way to “show how far [Olmert] has gone.”
The determination of Wolpe and other messianists to make political statements is integrally connected to their belief that the rebbe is the messiah. Working from statements that Schneerson made, opposing land for peace and calling for expansionist policies for Israel, the messianists have tended to promote hard-line right-wing positions.
As to the heat he is feeling from other Chabad leaders, Wolpe said: “What is embarrassing Chabad is that we don’t do anything to stop the Holocaust Olmert is bringing to Israel. What are they doing?”…
The Forward makes clear who Rabbi Wolpe is:
…Wolpe is the most popular leader of the messianic strand of Chabad, which holds that the 1994 death of the Lubavitcher rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson did not challenge the belief held in parts of the sect that he was the messiah. Wolpe was the first rabbi to go public with this position in 1994. A conflict has festered since then between followers of this belief and others, who present themselves as the mainstream and who reject such overt messianic claims.
Leaders on both sides have struggled to honor a ruling of a Brooklyn-based rabbinical court, issued immediately after the rebbe’s death, that said the movement should not split in two and the factions should not publicly undermine each other.…
The bulk of the article deal with what the Forward thinks may become a formal split between the messianists and the "mainstream" faction.
However, the Forward errs when reporting Chabad's relationship with army service:
Chabad occupies a privileged position among Israel’s ultra-Orthodox groups, being the only major Hasidic group whose members serve in the army.
This is simply false. Most Chabad followers do not serve in the army.
Only a handful of Chabadniks do serve. Most of them are sons of ba'al teshuvas or ba'al teshuvas themselves. This gives Chabad the appearance eof serving when in truth most of that service is done by ba'al teshuvas and not by non-ba'al teshuva Chabad families.
A group of older Chabadniks from non-ba'al teshuva families did serve in the army. These men served in the 1948 war and some of them remained in the IDF reserves until they became to old to serve. Reb Yona Mendelson, o.h., the "Sar HaMashkim," and an Old City stalwart, was one of those.
The last several years have seen so-called "at risk" Chabad youth joining the army. This trend is mirrored in most haredi communities, as well.
You can read the entire article here.