Israeli Rabbi Urges Troops to Disobey Army

A leading Israeli rabbi on Sunday urged the country’s soldiers to disobey any orders to remove Jewish settlers from the West Bank, Gaza Strip or Golan Heights or to take other forceful actions against them, asserting that God wants them there and that the government would be wrong to move them.

“The soldiers must refuse this order,” declared Rabbi Shlomo Goren, a former chief rabbi of Israel and of the Israeli armed forces. “This would be an order against the commandments of the Torah.

“Any order that contradicts the law of Moses is a rebellion against Moses, against the Torah, against Judaism and against the Almighty, and it must, absolutely must, be rejected and refused.”

Goren’s call, highlighting the deep divisions between secular and religious Israelis over the accord with the Palestine Liberation Organization on self-government in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, brought demands from government ministers that he be charged with sedition and rebellion.

Housing Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, a retired general, accused Goren of effectively inciting soldiers “to rebel against the government.”

“He has broken the law--this is an act of sedition,” Ben-Eliezer said. “A man like this should face a military court-martial.”

As the former chief chaplain of the Israeli armed forces, the 76-year-old Goren holds a reserve commission of major general and, under Israeli law, remains subject to military discipline.

As one of the country’s former chief rabbis, however, Goren continues to command wide respect among Israelis who observe the strictures of Jewish law.

Goren argued, first in a pamphlet distributed Saturday in West Bank synagogues and then in interviews on state-run radio Sunday, that Jews have a God-given obligation to settle the biblical Land of Israel, including the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and that to interfere with their observance of that religious requirement would be wrong.

The 136,400 Jewish settlers in the Gaza Strip and West Bank found comfort in Goren’s comments, after revised military orders called on soldiers last week to curtail settler protests.

“They cannot obey these orders the government is giving; they must refuse. Otherwise, they are in rebellion against the highest authority,” Goren said, contending that an Israeli soldier, as a good Jew, would be obliged to disobey the order.

Justice Minister David Libai said after a Cabinet discussion of Goren’s views that legal authorities will review them for possible violation of Israeli law.

Moshe Katsav, leader of the opposition Likud Party in the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, condemned Goren’s call to soldiers to disobey orders.

No Jew has the right to disobey orders in the Israeli army, Katsav said.

Under Israel’s agreement with the PLO, no Jewish settlements are to be evacuated for at least five years, when a permanent solution for the West Bank and Gaza Strip, both occupied by Israel since the 1967 Middle East War, will be sought.

Right-wing Israelis are nevertheless alarmed at the possibility of withdrawal and a potential dismantling of settlements.

The Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, the leading settlers’ group, said Sunday that its most recent survey of the West Bank and Gaza communities--based on local tax records--shows a population increase of 7.3% last year to a total of 136,415 people in 144 communities.

Over the weekend, meanwhile, police detained six people, four Americans and two Israelis, in the Jerusalem area on suspicion of illegal possession of weapons for use against Arabs. They were ordered held for two to five days.

They were described as members or associates of Kach, the militant Zionist organization founded by the late Rabbi Meir Kahane.