Last week in front of a cheering crowd of fellow rabbis, many of them Chabad-affiliated, Rabbi Wolpe called for the murder of Prime Minister Olmert and other government officials. Rabbi Ariel Sokolovsky, the extreme Chabad messianist, has been urging me to print Rabbi Sholom DovBer Wolpe's "clarification."
Sokolovsky supports Rabbi Wolpe and his call for murder.
What is this clarification? This, from Chabad.info:
Rabbi Shalom Dov Wolpe said Thursday that the comments he made at the Tuesday conference were twisted and taken out of context. In calling for the execution of state leaders by legal means, he was not calling for vigilante violence, he explained, but rather calling on the police to implement the law. Rabbi Wolpe wrote that he believes violence against a fellow Jew is unacceptable, but that law enforcement has the right and responsibility to enforce the law.
One of Israel's laws prohibits providing assistance to Nazis, he explained, and Muslim terrorist groups are the Nazis of our day. If the government provides terrorists with aid, he reasoned, then the government has violated the law and its members must suffer the consequences, which include the death penalty.
Rabbi Wolpe emphasized that he was calling for any such punishments to be carried out in a legal manner.
Of course, the Knesset, which wrote and passed those laws, and the courts, which are charged with their enforcement, do not agree with Rabbi Wolpe.
Rabbi Wolpe is a despicable person. He should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, as should his fellow rabbis who aide him.