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Dov Lior (; born 30 October 1933) is an Israeli Orthodox
rabbi A rabbi (; ) is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism. One becomes a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi—known as ''semikha''—following a course of study of Jewish history and texts such as the Talmud. The basic form of t ...
and political figure part of a far-right, nationalist movement for an ethnic and religious state. He served as the
Chief Rabbi Chief Rabbi () is a title given in several countries to the recognized religious leader of that country's Jewish community, or to a rabbinic leader appointed by the local secular authorities. Since 1911, through a capitulation by Ben-Zion Meir ...
of
Kiryat Arba Kiryat Arba or Qiryat Arba () is an urban Israeli settlement on the outskirts of Hebron, in the southern Israeli-occupied West Bank. Founded in 1968, in it had a population of . The international community considers Israeli settlements in the ...
, a Jewish settlement near the West Bank town of
Hebron Hebron (; , or ; , ) is a Palestinian city in the southern West Bank, south of Jerusalem. Hebron is capital of the Hebron Governorate, the largest Governorates of Palestine, governorate in the West Bank. With a population of 201,063 in ...
, until late 2014. He is the dean (or
rosh yeshiva Rosh yeshiva or Rosh Hayeshiva (, plural, pl. , '; Anglicized pl. ''rosh yeshivas'') is the title given to the dean of a yeshiva, a Jewish educational institution that focuses on the study of traditional religious texts, primarily the Talmud and th ...
) of the Kiryat Arba IDF- Hesder Yeshiva and leads the council of rabbis for the West Bank settlements. Lior founded the hard-right Tekumah party together with Arutz 7's owner Rabbi Zalman Melamed and Rabbi Chaim Steiner. Lior is a longtime symbol of religious and nationalist extremism in Israel. Lior has also expressed support for mass murderers, such as Israeli-American mass murderer
Baruch Goldstein Baruch Kopel Goldstein (; born Benjamin Carl Goldstein; December 9, 1956 – February 25, 1994) was an American and Israeli physician and religious extremist who, in 1994, murdered 29 Palestinian people in Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West ...
, who killed 29 Muslims in a Hebron mosque. He claimed the 2015 Islamic State attacks on Paris, which left 130 civilians dead, were deserved as payback for the Holocaust. When Israel invaded the Gaza Strip in 2014, he issued a religious ruling that allowed soldiers to kill civilians if that's what's needed for the safety of Israel and, if necessary, destroy Gaza entirely.


Biography

Dov Leinwand (later Lior) was born to a Belz Hasidic family, son to Moshe Leinwand, in
Jarosław Jarosław (; , ; ; ) is a town in southeastern Poland, situated on the San (river), San River. The town had 35,475 inhabitants in 2023. It is the capital of Jarosław County in the Subcarpathian Voivodeship. History Jarosław is located in the ...
, western Galicia, Poland. During
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, he fled the Nazis with his family to the
Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
. They went deep into Soviet territory, including
Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...
and
Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a landlocked country primarily in Central Asia, with a European Kazakhstan, small portion in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the Kazakhstan–Russia border, north and west, China to th ...
, and suffered from hunger and disease. Both of his parents died. In 1944, he was placed in an orphanage for Polish citizens. In 1945, he arrived in Poland. Using a false identity, he managed to pass into the American occupation zone in
Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
, where Jewish institutions operated. There, he reunited with an older brother who had served in the
Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...
during the war, while another brother who was with him during the war joined the
Hashomer Hatzair Hashomer Hatzair (, , 'The Young Guard') is a Labor Zionism, Labor Zionist, secular Jewish youth movement founded in 1913 in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, Austria-Hungary. It was also the name of the Hashomer Hatzair Workers Party, the ...
movement. Lior was placed in a Jewish children's home, where he began to study
Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...
. In 1947, Lior was one of the passengers on the ''
SS Exodus ''Exodus 1947'' was a Packet boat, packet steamship that was built in the United States in 1928 as ''President Warfield'' for the Baltimore Steam Packet Company. From her completion in 1928 until 1942 she carried passengers and freight across Che ...
'', which was intercepted by the
Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the naval warfare force of the United Kingdom. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service, and its officers hold their commissions from the King of the United Kingdom, King. Although warships were used by Kingdom ...
after defying the British blockade of Palestine. He and the other refugees were deported by the British back to Germany. He eventually managed to reach
Mandatory Palestine Mandatory Palestine was a British Empire, British geopolitical entity that existed between 1920 and 1948 in the Palestine (region), region of Palestine, and after 1922, under the terms of the League of Nations's Mandate for Palestine. After ...
aboard the ship ''Negba'', which arrived a few weeks before the
establishment of the State of Israel The Israeli Declaration of Independence, formally the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel (), was proclaimed on 14 May 1948 (5 Iyar 5708), at the end of the 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine, civil war phase and ...
. Once there, he changed his surname to the
Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...
''Lior''. In Israel, he first studied at the
Bnei Akiva Bnei Akiva (, , "Children of Akiva") is the largest religious Zionist youth movement in the world, with over 125,000 members in 42 countries. It was first established in Mandatory Palestine in 1929, advocating the values of Torah and labor. Bne ...
Kfar HaRoeh yeshiva, and then at Zvi Yehuda Kook's Mercaz haRav yeshiva, where, owing to Lior's being an orphan, Kook treated him like a son. He served in the
Israel Defense Forces The Israel Defense Forces (IDF; , ), alternatively referred to by the Hebrew-language acronym (), is the national military of the State of Israel. It consists of three service branches: the Israeli Ground Forces, the Israeli Air Force, and ...
for one month in 1964. Lior married Bitya Goldberger in 1960. She died of cancer in 1988. He later married Esther, widow of Ephraim Shahor. Lior has 11 children, 55 grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. His two brothers arrived in Israel after him, and joined the
Hashomer Hatzair Hashomer Hatzair (, , 'The Young Guard') is a Labor Zionism, Labor Zionist, secular Jewish youth movement founded in 1913 in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, Austria-Hungary. It was also the name of the Hashomer Hatzair Workers Party, the ...
kibbutz HaMa'apil.


Rabbinic career

Lior is a
Religious Zionist Religious Zionism () is a religious denomination that views Zionism as a fundamental component of Orthodox Judaism. Its adherents are also referred to as ''Dati Leumi'' (), and in Israel, they are most commonly known by the plural form of the fi ...
leader. He served as Rabbi of Moshav Kfar Haroeh for 10 years. He subsequently became Chief Rabbi of Kiryat Arba. He serves along with Eliezer Waldman as head of the Hesder Yeshiva Nir Kiryat Arba. In 1978, he ran for the post of Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, but was defeated 37-25 by Bezalel Zolty.HaPardes Journal, Tevet 5738 p. 26 He served as Av Beit Din of the Beersheva Rabbinical Court. One of his rulings, that Jews should be prepared to sacrifice their lives to defend the settlement of Hebron, has been interpreted as support for acts of suicide if the government tries to force evacuation. In the late 1980s, Israel's Attorney General barred Lior's almost certain election to the Supreme Rabbinical Council of Israel following a public outcry over his remark that captured Arab terrorists could be used to conduct medical experiments. After the Mercaz HaRav massacre, he said it was forbidden by ''
halakha ''Halakha'' ( ; , ), also Romanization of Hebrew, transliterated as ''halacha'', ''halakhah'', and ''halocho'' ( ), is the collective body of Judaism, Jewish religious laws that are derived from the Torah, Written and Oral Torah. ''Halakha'' is ...
'' (Jewish law) to employ or rent homes to Arabs. In 2008, Lior and other right-wing rabbis declared the government's policies on
Israeli settlements Israeli settlements, also called Israeli colonies, are the civilian communities built by Israel throughout the Israeli-occupied territories. They are populated by Israeli citizens, almost exclusively of Jewish identity or ethnicity, and hav ...
to be "worse than the British Mandate's
White Paper A white paper is a report or guide that informs readers concisely about a complex issue and presents the issuing body's philosophy on the matter. It is meant to help readers understand an issue, solve a problem, or make a decision. Since the 199 ...
". Evaluating the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Lior said it proved Israel was the one Middle Eastern state with sufficient military force to be considered a real power, a state all nations, bar none, must reckon with, and that "rooting out the iniquity" (of the terrorists) was "but a preliminary to the eventual rooting out of all evil in the world". According to Professor Uriel Simon, Lior is also reported to have said at a rally that, "(i)n order to prevent the death of one (Israeli) soldier, I am willing to destroy all of Beirut". 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". In 2011, he suggested that the Israeli government should offer incentives to the
Bedouin The Bedouin, Beduin, or Bedu ( ; , singular ) are pastorally nomadic Arab tribes who have historically inhabited the desert regions in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopotamia (Iraq). The Bedouin originated in the Sy ...
to return to what he considered as their places of origin, Saudi Arabia and Libya. In late 2014, Lior stepped down as chief rabbi. In February 2015, he moved from Kiryat Arba to the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.


Controversies

Lior has stated that the killing of non-Jews during wartime is sanctioned by ''halakha''. He asserted that Jewish women should not use sperm donated by a non-Jewish man, and that a baby born through such an insemination will have the "negative genetic traits that characterize non-Jews", and that, "If the father is not Jewish, what character traits could he have? Traits of cruelty, of barbarism." In 2007, commenting on the situation of African refugees in Israel, Lior said that a much more important issue was the situation of Jewish settlers - whom he termed "refugees" - expelled from Gaza in 2005. In 2008, was on the list ″The World’s Worst Religious Leaders″ from
Foreign Policy Foreign policy, also known as external policy, is the set of strategies and actions a State (polity), state employs in its interactions with other states, unions, and international entities. It encompasses a wide range of objectives, includ ...
. Leading rabbis have testified that Lior was the source of rulings labeling the late Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin Yitzhak Rabin (; , ; 1 March 1922 – 4 November 1995) was an Israeli politician, statesman and general. He was the prime minister of Israel, serving two terms in office, 1974–1977, and from 1992 until Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, his ass ...
a ''
rodef A ''rodef'' (, "pursuer"; , '), in traditional Jewish law, is one who is "pursuing" another to murder him or her. According to Jewish law, such a person must be stopped—even killed—by any bystander after that pursuer has been warned and refu ...
'' and a ''moser'' (traitor who endangers Jewish lives). Rabin's assassin,
Yigal Amir Yigal Amir (born May 31, 1970) is an Israeli right-wing extremist who assassinated the incumbent prime minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin on November 4, 1995, at the conclusion of a rally in Tel Aviv, Israel. At the time of the murder, he ...
, is known to have visited Lior.
Baruch Goldstein Baruch Kopel Goldstein (; born Benjamin Carl Goldstein; December 9, 1956 – February 25, 1994) was an American and Israeli physician and religious extremist who, in 1994, murdered 29 Palestinian people in Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West ...
also met with Lior. After Goldstein murdered 29 Palestinian worshipers at the Cave of the Patriarchs, Lior declared him "as holy as the martyrs of the Holocaust". Lior gave a eulogy at the funeral of Baruch Goldstein. In June 2011, Lior was arrested by Israeli police and questioned on suspicion of inciting violence for endorsing a religious book, the '' King's Torah'', that gives Jews permission to kill innocent non-Jews, including children. 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 Shlomo Moshe Amar (; ; born April 1, 1948)Gantz, Nesanel. "A Chief Rabbi of the Past and Future". ''Ami (magazine), Ami'', November 5, 2014, pp. 26-27. is the former Chief Rabbinate of Israel, Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel. He served in the po ...
condemned the arrest as a "grave offense to an important rabbi's honor", and 25 members of the Knesset signed a petition denouncing it as "shameful" and as having been orchestrated by Deputy State Prosecutor
Shai Nitzan Shai Nitzan () was the former State Attorney of Israel, from 2013 to December 2019. Nitzan headed the commission assigned to investigate the October 2000 events, finding no misconduct on the part of the Israel Police. The position was vacant fr ...
. Lior was released after an hour of questioning. Both opposition leader
Tzipi Livni Tziporah Malka "Tzipi" Livni (, ; born 8 July 1958) is an Israeli politician, diplomat and lawyer. A former member of the Knesset and leader in the center-left political camp, Livni is a former Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Israel), foreign mini ...
and Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu Benjamin Netanyahu (born 21 October 1949) is an Israeli politician who has served as the prime minister of Israel since 2022, having previously held the office from 1996 to 1999 and from 2009 to 2021. Netanyahu is the longest-serving prime min ...
called for a full judicial investigation of Lior's remarks, and said that rabbis were not above the law. In September 2011, Lior stated that Arabs are "evil camel riders". In 2012, Lior referred to US President
Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...
with what was possibly a racial slur, " kushi of the West"—which is akin to the modern pejorative use of the word negro in certain contexts—and likened him to the genocidal enemy of the Jews,
Haman Haman ( ; also known as Haman the Agagite) is the main antagonist in the Book of Esther, who according to the Hebrew Bible was an official in the court of the Achaemenid Empire, Persian empire under King Ahasuerus#Book of Esther, Ahasuerus, comm ...
. He also compared Western European leaders to Nazi collaborators. In July 2014, he said it was acceptable to kill
Palestinian Palestinians () are an Arab ethnonational group native to the Levantine region of Palestine. *: "Palestine was part of the first wave of conquest following Muhammad's death in 632 CE; Jerusalem fell to the Caliph Umar in 638. The indigenous p ...
civilians and destroy the entire
Gaza Strip The Gaza Strip, also known simply as Gaza, is a small territory located on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea; it is the smaller of the two Palestinian territories, the other being the West Bank, that make up the State of Palestine. I ...
in order to protect Jewish people in the South. In November 2015, during a eulogy at a funeral in Jerusalem for a father and son killed in West Bank, Lior said of the Paris attacks: "The wicked ones in blood-soaked Europe deserve it for what they did to our people 70 years ago." In July 2024 Lior with several rabbis of the right-wing religious Zionist community came out against a hostage deal.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lior, Dov 1933 births Living people Israeli Orthodox Jews Israeli Orthodox rabbis Israeli soldiers Mercaz HaRav alumni Religious Zionist Orthodox rabbis Religious Zionist rosh yeshivas Rabbis in Hebron Rabbis in Jerusalem Israeli rosh yeshivas Chardal People from Kiryat Arba People from Jarosław Rabbis in Beersheba Anti-Arabism in Israel Orthodox poskim Yeshivat Kfar HaRoeh alumni