Rabbi Murdered on Way to Joseph’s Tomb
Early Sunday night, Israeli security forces discovered the bullet-ridden body of rabbi Hillel Lieberman, a dual US/Israeli citizen living in Elon Moreh, who was last seen heading for the scrorched Joseph’s Tomb in nearby Nablus (biblical Shechem) to salvage the synagogue’s Torah scroll.
After Lieberman heard that Arabs were desecrating the Jewish holy site, he decided to walk to the compound, the site of intense fighting of late, to try to save the Torah scroll and Jewish religious books at the yeshiva where he taught, also located in the compound. He was unarmed and wearing a tallit. One day later, his dead body was found in a cave outside Nablus.
An IDF statement issued last night said, “Lieberman was murdered in cold blood by Palestinian terrorists as he made his way to Nablus. The IDF holds the PA directly responsible and expects the PA to put an immediate end to all the violence.”
A US citizen and father of seven, Lieberman was one of the founders and administrators of the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva that was established at Joseph’s Tomb.
The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations called on US President Bill Clinton to hold PA leader Yasser Arafat personally responsible for his murder. In a statement the conference said, “The attack on the tomb recalls Kristallnact in 1938, and the destruction of synagogues and Jewish institutions in Jerusalem’s Old City in 1947,” a conference statement added. Just last Thursday another rabbi was severely beaten by PA police, when he mistakenly entered a PA-controlled area. He escaped with his life, but was hospitalized.
US Senator Joseph Lieberman, the Democratic candidate for US Vice President, denied being related to Hillel Lieberman. Sidney Zvulun Lieberman, the father of the slain settler and a rabbi in Brooklyn, told the New York Times that his grandfather and Senator Lieberman’s grandfather were brothers.
Used with Permission from International Christian Embassy Jerusalem.