Halachic Ruling on Disengagement

Rabbi Shaul Bar-Ilan, writing for the Council of Rabbis of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, has issued a halachic opininion, charging that police and soldiers who carry out the evacuation of Jewish settlements will be committing 14 biblical sins, including the humiliation of orphans, widows and converts; theft; kidnapping; the destruction of synagogues and fruit-bearing trees; possible desecration of the Shabbat; and, most seriously, the indirect causation of murder. Mati Wagner, of The Jerusalem Post, notes that the ruling is unique in focusing not on the biblical commandment to settle the Land of Israel, but rather on individual rights and Bar-Ilan’s belief that the disengagement is a form of ethnic cleansing.