HaRav Yitzchak Dovid Grossman Shlita, Chief Rabbi of Migdal Ha’emek, was interviewed on Wednesday night by Kol Chai Radio. Following are the highlights of the interview.
Rav Grossman met with Justice Minister Prof. Yaakov Neeman about two months ago, as well as meeting with Public Security Minister Aharonovitch. The Rav stated both did a great deal towards arranging the imminent release and Minister Neeman did sign the necessary forms, but usually the process takes “a long time” but it appears they expedited the process. All involved remain hopeful the bachor Yosef will return to Eretz Yisrael soon, aware Japanese authorities may delay his handover to complete his sentence in Israel.
Rav Grossman stated “our ambassador” gave us some information, confirming there are problems regarding kosher food for the boys imprisoned in Japan.
The Rav turned to Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who did exert the weight of his office towards getting kosher food for the boys according to his information. It appears that at present, they are receiving kosher food based on information provided by Israe’ls ambassador to Japan.
Rav Grossman added “every extra day the boys are there is pikuach nefesh and we must increase tefillos and improve midos, paying special attention to loshon hora, realizing they boys may be there due to our actions”. He added this is the lesson of the Three Weeks and the Nine Days, to end the needless hatred, the loshon hora, and the other acts that hurt all of Am Yisrael.
(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)
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4 Responses
Rav Grossman is the type of person who is being ‘mekarev’ the geulah, may we all try to emulate his ahavas yisroel and tzidkus.
Most countries are quite happy to get rid of criminal aliens (they are criminals, and from a Japanese perspective, they are aliens)as long as they are certain the receiving country won’t give them a hero’s welcome. You are acting as if they moved mountains to get the boys transferred, when in fact all the moved were mole hills. The only newsworthy part of the story is that it involves frum kids, since frum kids normally don’t get busted for drugs – and that part is loshon hora.
#2 You know as well as anyone else that this was not a simple procedure.
Thank you Prof. Neeman for helping secure his release to the state of Israel. Can we get Pollard/Shalit/European prisoners (of innocent drug dealings) assigned to finish their sentence in the land of the Jews?
Pollard was charged with a political crime (treason) against the country that is holding him – the boys in Japan were just couriers passing through the airport. If he was a rapist, or even a drug dealer, and a native Israeli, it wouldn’t be hard to make such a deal. If Israel is willing to reciprocate, it shouldn’t have trouble dealing with the Europeans (though how innocent people are is a bit questionable – Israelis (both of Jewish and Arab descent) do have a widespread reputation for engaging in many nefarious activities.
Israel doesn’t even recognize the government in Gaza (and vice versa), and hasn’t made a serious offer to trade for Shalit, or even to negotiate face to face (which implies recognition). Given that Shalit’s profession was to kill Arabs, the Arabs figure they are being reasonable in offering to trade him for people whose career choice was to kill Jews (that is what soldiers do for a living, kill people).
The kids were lucky to have been caught in Japan, since a lot of countries would have executed them. In New York, they would have been facing a life sentence.