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| By Israel Insider staff May 23, 2008 |
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New York financier Morris Talansky, witness at the center of the corruption scandal engulfing Ehud Olmert, was persuaded to come to Israel this spring and testify against the prime minister by a group of leading nationalist Israeli rabbis who want to bring Olmert down, a spokesman for the rabbis told The Jerusalem Post Thursday. Talansky admitted receiving a blessing from an important rabbi before being questioned by the police, but denies being encouraged to testify before he left.
Yehoshua Meiri, speaking to The Jerusalem Post on Thursday, said the Council of Torah and Kabbalah Sages, which he represents, gave Talansky "halachic approval" to disclose his financial contributions to Olmert in an Internet video conference held between the rabbis and an associate of Talansky six months ago. "Talansky's appearance in Israel and police testimony was aimed at harming Olmert," Meiri said. "The only question was one of timing. When you have one shell left in your cannon, you have to decide when it's best to fire it."
The rabbis gave an additional dose rabbinical encouragement directly to Talansky after he arrived here for Pessah last month, Meiri said. "I received one blessing from Rabbi Haim Kanievsky," Talansky confirmed, but "there was no halachic decision - absolutely not." Kanievsky is a leading haredi Lithuanian rabbi and heads the Council of Torah and Kabbalah Sages, which includes Rabbi Baruch Avraham Rakovsky of Jerusalem, Rabbi Shlomo Hamshalem of Beersheba, and rabbis from Judea and Samaria. The council was formed shortly after the death of the eminent Kabbalist Yitzhak Kaduri in January 2006.
"Talansky is a high-profile member of an Orthodox circle which supports the liberation of Jerusalem, meaning the buying up of real estate in the capital," said Meiri, a freelance journalist and one-time founder of the secularist Shinui Party who has since become religious. "This circle had formed business links with Olmert -- not for the purposes of corruption, but because they supported him ideologically," Meiri said. "But when Olmert announced during the Annapolis conference last November that he was prepared to relinquish parts of east Jerusalem and Jewish sovereignty over the Temple Mount, Olmert's Orthodox backers felt he had betrayed them. Suddenly, they had a fifth column in their midst."
Olmert is to be interrogated again Friday before the Sabbath. Talansky is scheduled to testify on Tuesday. |
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