Police examining complaint against Rabbi Dov Lior over ruling permitting Jews to harvest olives on Palestinian land

Police say they are examining a complaint filed in response to comments by ultranationalist religious leader Rabbi Dov Lior that Jews may harvest olives belonging to Palestinians.

“A complaint has been received by the Israel Police and passed on for examination and to be addressed by the relevant authorities,” the police say.

Lior, the most authoritative rabbi in the hardline religious-Zionist community, wrote in a religious ruling on Friday that Palestinian land had essentially been stolen from Jews since the Jewish people never willingly relinquished their property in the Land of Israel.

Lior, 92, wrote that it was permitted for Jews to harvest olive trees on Palestinian property the owners could not access due to prohibitions by security services, and indeed on any land, “in order to show to the public our ownership of the land, and in so doing one fulfills the [religious] commandment of conquering the land.”

On Sunday, the Rabbis for Human Rights organization filed a complaint for incitement to racism and soliciting the theft of property.

“I regret having to file a police complaint against a rabbi in Israel, but reality compels us to stand on the side of the Torah,” said acting director of Rabbis for Human Rights Anton Goodman.

“Entering others’ land and taking their crops in violation of the law — that is not what God wants from us in this land.”

The Israeli penal code defines racism as “persecution, humiliation, degradation, displaying enmity, hostility, or violence, or the incitement of discord against a public or segments of the population — all on the grounds of color, membership in a race, or national-ethnic origin,” and is punishable by up to five years in prison.

Prosecutors have been reluctant to indict rabbis over religious rulings, however. In 2012, then attorney general Yehuda Weinstein closed an investigation into the authors of the infamous “Torat Hamelech” book, which said it is permissible in some situations to kill non-Jews according to Jewish law. Weinstein said the case was closed because there was not enough evidence that the book was published with the intention to incite racism.

An arrest warrant was issued against Lior in that case in 2011 because he wrote an endorsement of Torat Hamelech, but he refused the police summons. He was subsequently arrested, questioned, and later released.