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ident Rabbi Rick Jacobs said the ruling “was years in the making and reflects the diversity and vibrancy of Jewish life in Israel and around the world.”
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“The Court has affirmed the reality that the Jewish people are stronger because of the contributions of Reform and Conservative Movements and their commitment to bringing more Jews into the Jewish People,” he continued. “We hope this ruling establishes a precedent that will lead to further recognition of the Reform and Conservative movements in Israel.”
The Conservative Movement’s Rabbinical Assembly in a statement called the ruling a “rebuke” of “recent Knesset efforts to restrict religious freedom in Israel.”
“This was a very long time coming. Not swift justice, but sweet and righteous just the same,” it said.
Monday’s High Court ruling determined that people who convert to Judaism in Israel through the Reform and Conservative movements must be recognized as Jews for the purpose of the Law of Return and are thus entitled to Israeli citizenship.
The bombshell decision, which shatters the longstanding Orthodox ruling on officially recognized conversions in Israel, was the culmination of an appeal process that began more than 15 years ago, involving 12 people in the country who converted to Judaism through non-Orthodox denominations. The justices specified that they had previously withheld issuing a ruling to allow the state to handle the matter, but the state had failed to do so.
The ruling only applies to conversions in Israel.
Chief Sephardic Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef blasted the ruling.
“What the Reform and Conservatives call ‘conversion’ is nothing but a forgery of Judaism,” he said in a statement, calling on lawmakers to work for a “quick” legislative fix.
Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi David Lau said that those who undergo Reform or Conservative conversions “are not Jews.”
“No High Court decision will change this fact,” he said.
According to Agudath Israel of America, the ruling is a “body blow to true Jewish unity” and is “both misleading and dangerous.”
“Misleading, because conversion is not a secular change of status; it is, inherently, a religious one. And dangerous, because bestowing legal status of any sort to ‘conversions’ that lack the essential elements that have defined geirus for millennia can only confuse the Jewish public and increase disunity.”
White House Declassifies Khashoggi Report
The State Department declassified an intelligence report that accused Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (MBS) of ordering the 2018 assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
The Saudi journalist had been abducted and killed in Riyadh’s Istanbul consulate in 2018 by operatives reporting to the crown prince. Ever since the saga exploded in an international scandal, MBS has denied knowing about the assassination and vowed to punish those responsible.
The now-public State Department report released on Friday found that MBS had personally recruited and trained the ex-Special Forces soldiers before tasking them to find Khashoggi and kill him. Known as the “rapid intervention force,” or RIF, the force, according to the State Department, is there “to defend the Crown Prince, answers only to him, and had directly participated in earlier dissident suppression operations in the Kingdom and abroad.”
Citing the crown prince’s “control of decision-making in the Kingdom” and the “direct involvement of a key adviser and members or Mohammed bin Salman’s protective detail in the operation,” the report said that there “was no way” MBS was not aware of happenings.
It added that MBS had frequently indicated his “support for violent measures to silence dissidents abroad, including Khashoggi.”
“Since 2017, the Crown Prince has had absolute control of the Kingdom’s security and intelligence organizations, making it highly unlikely that Saudi officials would have carried out an operation of this nature without the Crown Prince’s authorization,” the report concluded.
Saudi Arabia categorically denied the allegations, calling them “misleading and false” in a statement released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia completely rejects the negative, false and unacceptable assessment in the report pertaining to the Kingdom’s leadership and notes that the report contained inaccurate information and conclusions,” the Foreign Ministry asserted.
This report marks the first that the U.S. allowed the findings to be published. Former President Donald Trump had prohibited the State Department from airing the conclusions due to concerns that such an act could torpedo the U.S.-Saudi alliance.
Following the release of the U.S. intelligence community’s findings, the Biden administration sanctioned 76 senior Saudi officials for their role in the murder. The aforementioned individuals will be banned from visiting the United States and will have their assets in the U.S. frozen.
Upon announcing the sanctions, Secretary of state Anthony Blinken said the move was a sign of the Biden administration’s intent to “push back against governments that reach beyond their borders to threaten and attack journalists and perceived dissidents for exercising their fundamental freedoms.
“As a matter of safety for all within our borders, perpetrators targeting dissidents on behalf of any foreign government should not be permitted to reach American soil,” Blinken added.
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