Settler leader Rabbi Moshe Levinger of Hebron suffered a stroke.
Levinger was alert and conscious at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital, Arutz 7 radio reported Thursday morning. The news service said he was taken for emergency surgery in the afternoon.
E-mail lists throughout Israel and around the world posted messages asking people to pray for Levinger.
Levinger established the first Jewish presence in Hebron after the 1967 Six-Day War, moving to a former army base on a hill to the northeast of Hebron that became the settlement of Kiryat Arba. Earlier this year he worked with a group of West Bank activists to establish five new outposts.
Levinger has been arrested about a dozen times for altercations with Palestinians, and he has been imprisoned several times involving incidents of violence. In 1991 Levinger was sentenced to seven months in prison for a violent altercation at the Tomb of the Patriachs in Hebron.
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.
