Rabbi Dov Lior, who served as the Chief Rabbi of Hebron and Kiryat Arba, and currently serves as the Rosh Yeshiva of the Kiryat Arba Hesder Yeshiva and leads the Council of Rabbis of Judea and Samaria, on Monday marked the upcoming wedding of his grandson by ascending the Temple Mount with Rabbi Israel Ariel, the Temple Yeshiva’s Rosh Yeshiva and head of the Temple Mount Administration, Rabbi Shimshon Elboim.
The highlight of their visit was the Mincha prayer with a minyan on the Temple Mount, which since the Six-Day War and until recently was not permitted at the holiest site of the Jewish people.
Rabbi Lior recited the verse in Isaiah 46:7, “I will bring them to My sacred mount and let them rejoice in My house of prayer, their burnt offerings and sacrifices shall be welcome on My altar, for My House shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples,” and noted that being able to pray Minchah on the sacred mountain was “progress, thank God.”
Rabbi Lior was excited to meet a religious Jewish police officer on the Temple Mount and gave him his blessing.
Rabbi Lior is probably the most hated rabbi in Israeli leftist circles, a hatred he has earned honestly. In 2012, Lior referred to then-President Barack Obama as the “Kushi of the West,” which was taken to be a racist slur, although in scripture, the word means Black man without a negative connotation “Can a Kushi change his skin, or a leopard his spots?” (Jeremiah 13:23)
In July 2014, Rabbi Lior said it was acceptable to kill PA Arab civilians and destroy the entire Gaza Strip to protect Jewish people who lived in the South. Presumably, had anyone in government listened to his advice instead of sending the cops to pick him up for questioning on incitement, October 7 could have been prevented.
In November 2015, during a eulogy for a father and son who were killed in Judea and Samaria, Rabbi Lior said of the Paris attacks by Islamist suicide bombers: “The wicked ones in blood-soaked Europe deserve it for what they did to our people 70 years ago.”
Couldn’t say it better myself.
