Senior Chabad rabbi condones killing Jewish politicians who work with Arabs

A senior Chabad rabbi has been criticised by his own movement after he said it was permissable to kill Jewish Israeli politicians who worked with Arabs.

Gedalia Axelrod, a senior cleric in the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement, issued a halakhic ruling earlier this week in which he said that Jewish politicians who form a government backed by Palestinian citizens of Israel were "din rodef," which roughly translates as "law of the pursuer."

Under Jewish religious law, a rodef is someone who poses a threat to another person's life and may be stopped by any means necessary.

The doctrine was previously invoked by Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin, Yigal Amir, to justify the prime minister’s killing in 1995.