News

Dov Lior, the chief rabbi of Kiryat Arba and Hebron, head of the
rabbinical committee in the territories and a power broker in the halls
of government, is this country's real prime minister, writer Sefi
Rachlevsky said in an op-ed in Haaretz's Hebrew edition last week.

Some of Lior's doctrines, which made headlines in the wake of his
refusal to be interrogated by police in an incitement case, were
revealed in Rachlevsky's piece: permission to spill Arab blood, praise
for the murderer Baruch Goldstein and spiritual support for extreme
right-wing Jewish terrorists. In addition, Lior is suspected of
involvement in the rabbinical condemnation of Yitzhak Rabin before the
prime minister was assassinated in 1995. A check of the Hebrew website
Arutz Meir (www.meirtv.co.il ), which offers some 11,000 recorded
lectures on Jewish topics, reveals that, somewhat surprisingly, the
fundamentalist rabbi also has firm opinions on something else: music.

A year ago, Lior was the guest of an educational institution whose
name is not stated on the recording, but which appears to have been a
music school, to judge by the excited questions of the musicians who
teach at the school: How should one view music composed by non-Jews? Is
it permissible to set biblical verses to the melodies of non-Jewish
songs... >>>