Israel’s rabbi for Hebron
JERUSALEM— Moshe Levinger (photo, in sunglasses) was a firebrand rabbi who spearheaded the modern Jewish settlement in the heart of the ancient and predominantly Palestinian city of Hebron, and who helped spread settlements in the territories Israel conquered in the 1967 war. His advocacy made him a polarizing figure in Israeli society. He was celebrated by supporters of the religious and ideological settler movement, who viewed Israel’s capture of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, along with Gaza, in the 1967 war as a sign of messianic redemption. Asserting that God had promised the biblical heartland to the Jewish people, they saw it as their duty to settle it and never give it up.
But for Israelis who yearned for a political resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Levinger’s push for settlement, and particularly the reclamation of old Jewish properties in Hebron, was seen as part of a provocative agenda to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Levinger died recently at Shaare Zedek Medical Center. He was 80. A hospital spokeswoman said he had been in ill health since having a stroke in 2007, and had been admitted for treatment in April after an epileptic seizure.
In a condolence letter to the Levinger family, a copy of which was distributed to reporters, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described Levinger as “an outstanding example of a generation that sought to realize the Zionist dream, in deed and in spirit, after the Six-Day War.”
Israeli authorities arrested Levinger many times. In September 1988, after Palestinians threw stones at his car in Hebron, he opened fire, shooting randomly toward shops and killing a Palestinian shopkeeper. In a plea bargain, Levinger was convicted of death by negligence. He served three months of a five-month prison sentence.
Levinger burst into the public eye in April 1968, when he led a group of settlers into the Park Hotel in Hebron to celebrate the Passover holiday and refused to leave. For the next three years, the group lived in the Israeli military compound in Hebron, until the settlement of Kiryat Arba was established adjacent to Hebron, with Israeli government approval.
Today, several hundred Jews live in Hebron, home to about170,000 Palestinians, and relations are tense. More than 650,000 Israelis live across the 1967 lines, in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, in settlements that most of the world considers a violation of international law.