Posted on 02/07/22
| News Source: i24
Irit Linur compares liberal religious movement to extremist Jewish cult Lev Tahor
Israel's Reform Jews are demanding an apology from Army Radio host Irit Linur over recent on-air remarks disparaging the liberal religious movement, Haaretz reports.
Linur, a secular right-wing Israeli, told listeners last week that “the Reform movement is foreign and has failed to connect with the masses here."
On the daily mid-day show "The Last Word" that she co-hosts, Linur slammed efforts to establish an egalitarian prayer space at Jerusalem's Western Wall, saying that Reform Jews, along with their political representative in Israel's parliament, Labor MK Gilad Kariv, "read from the Torah, seeking out violent confrontation" at the Kotel.
Linur described the campaign to revive the frozen 2016 deal to establish an egalitarian prayer space as “an effort to grant equal status to an esoteric religious fringe movement that is unimportant, nonexistent, unpopular and unaccepted.”
She compared the Reform movement to the extremist Jewish cult Lev Tahor, which has been described as the "Jewish Taliban" for their restrictive practices requiring, for example, women and girls older than 3 to wear long black robes covering their entire body except for their faces.
A letter sent to Defense Minister Benny Gantz from 150 Israel Defense Forces reserve officers who are members of Reform synagogues called for Linur's immediate dismissal if an apology is refused.
Members of the Israeli Reform youth movement sent a similar letter to military leaders.
The Israeli Conservative movement also sent a letter demanding that Linur and her co-host, Kobi Arieli, “take responsibility for and apologize on-air for their reckless incitement, and it must be made clear to them that these kind of messages won’t be heard on the public airwaves again."