The head of the soon-to-be-demolished Od Yosef Hai Yeshiva in the Yitzhar settlement has blamed the IDF for creating an atmosphere in which some Jews were executed a "price-tag" policy of retribution against Palestinians for the IDF demolition of settler homes in Judea and Samaria.
"A price tag policy is anarchy and they [the IDF] are the anarchists," said Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira on Sunday night at a solidarity event at the yeshiva. "A person who does things that can not be accepted by any sane person, is an anarchist."
"The person who decided to do completely crazy things; to evacuate Jews and to create an atmosphere of complete insecurity among Jews in Jersualem and in the Galilee, in the South and in Judea and Samaria, he is the person who caused this thing called, a "price-tag" policy," said Shapira.
He accused the civil administration of acting out of retribution for wrongs it believe those in Yitzhar had committed when it issued last week ademolition order against the 13,000 square meter building which houses the yeshiva.
In January, police arrested Shapira and attempted to link him to an arson attack on the Kafr Yassuf mosque, an act which police allege is part of the price-tagpolicy. He was released by a Jerusalem District Court judge for lack of evidence.
"The person who took out the demolition order said it was because of the price-tag policy, he was not embarrassed to say this," continued Shapira.
He congratulated those who had told the civil administration, "You are executing a price-tag policy."
"That price-tag policy that he has condemned, he himself has generated," said Shapira.
He called on Jews to fiercely defend the hilltops of Judea and Samaria through a sense of "mutual responsibility" to one another.
"It can not be that when a settlement on one hilltop is attacked, the settlemnet on the next hilltop sleeps," said Shapira. "There has to be a joint action on every hillop in Judea and Samaria. All of Judea and Samaria has to react fiercely, according to what has happened."
But Shapira stopped short of calling on them to execute a price-tag policy of retribution.
"The person who calls this a price-tag; is because he is afraid of himself," said Shapira. "We are not leading a scare campaign here, but rather one of caring, one Jew to the other."
"There is no price tag policy here," he went on. "It is an exaggerated fear by those who want to make things bad for us. They are afraid of the reaction of the healthy public and because they can not make what the non-Jews are demanding happen here."
The IDF Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) has said that the yeshiva was built in an area of the settlement designated for agriculture. It added that a demolition order was first issued against the structure when work was first started on the building in 1999.
The yeshiva in turn has claimed that its structure was built with funds and help from various ministries including Construction and Housing and Transportation.
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