Jewish religious extremists threatened Tuesday to kill a Hasidic leader if he supports Shimon Peres’ efforts to form a Labor-led coalition government.
Rabbi Moshe Yehoshua Hager, the Hasidic rebbe of Vishnitz, found a threatening letter and a bullet in an envelope on the staircase of his home in the ultra-Orthodox township of Bnei Brak, near Tel Aviv.
Hager is chairman of the Council of Torah Sages, the supreme authority of the Agudat Yisrael party, whose support Labor needs to win a Knesset confidence vote in support of the government it is trying to form.
According to the Tel Aviv police, the letter warned Hager not to order any Agudah Knesset member to back a government headed by Peres.
The letter was from a shadowy group of far-right religious extremists who call themselves Sicari’i. The name is derived from a group of assassins of the Second Temple era who murdered Jews suspected of collaborating with the Romans.
Peres, who had reached a coalition agreement with the Agudah two weeks ago, was thwarted April 11 by the defection of two of its five Knesset members, just as he was about to present his slate for a vote of confidence.
It was the first time Agudah politicians openly defied their Torah sages.
NO MORE EXTENSIONS FOR PERES
They are believed to have been influenced by Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, the Brooklyn-based Lubavitcher rebbe, who opposes the Labor Party’s willingness to consider territorial compromise as a way to peace.
Peres, meanwhile, continued to work against time to put together a viable government before his mandate expires on April 26. Although he will have used only 36 of the 42 days allowed him by law, Peres said Sunday he would not seek additional time.
His efforts seem to be focused on what aides call a “crucial” meeting Thursday with Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, religious mentor of the ultra-Orthodox Sephardic party Shas.
Although Yosef shares Labor’s views on territorial compromise, he has kept Shas within the Likud camp. But he says he will make his final decision on which party to back after next weekend.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
