Police complaints, petitions to the attorney general, calls for dismissal, angry reactions from MKs and thousands of discussions and comments on social media -- all are the result of remarks Chief Sephardi Rabbi of Jerusalem Shlomo Amar made against the LGBT community and Reform Judaism in an interview that appeared in Israel Hayom over the weekend. By Thursday afternoon, two police complaints were filed against Amar. The first, for incitement, was filed by Oded Fried, formerly the head of Aguda -- The Israeli National LGBT Task Force, which works to advance pro-LGBT public policy. Fried told Israel Hayom, "We must not sit idly by in the face of such flagrant and wild incitement. I call on law enforcement and elected officials who hold the power to stop the next murder in their hands, to act without delay to prosecute to the full extent of the law anyone who calls for harming people on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity." Another complaint for incitement to murder was filed against Amar by journalist and LGBT community activist Shirley Kleinman. She has also called for Amar to be removed from his position. Kleinman said, "Rabbi Amar's comments are explicit incitement to murder." She said, "Every citizen must stand trial for such an offense, all the more so when they are [committed by] influential public figures whose salaries come out of the pockets of men and women in the gay community. "I am hopeful that I will not be the last person to complain about these hateful statements, which encourage acts on the ground," she said. On Thursday, the heads of the Knesset's Lobby for the LGBT Community, MKs Merav Michaeli (Zionist Union), Yael German (Yesh Atid) and Michal Rozin (Meretz) called for immediate action to be taken to remove Amar from his position. In a harshly worded letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Religious Services Minister David Azoulay, the MKs accused Amar of taking advantage of his authority as a public figure and as a leader of public opinion "to castigate and incite against a large population in Israel." They said, "A public figure that endangers the security of Israel's citizens through exclusion and incitement should be fired immediately." Meretz party leader Zehava Galon wrote on her Facebook page that "Rabbi Amar can cover himself in the Torah as much as he wants, but we hear his darkness, not the Torah. The time has come to stop paying for his salary. Rabbi Amar receives money from the State of Israel. Does he claim we should execute homosexuals? Does he also recommend stoning, as the Torah teaches-" The controversy over Amar arose with the publication of an interview he gave to Israel Hayom, in which he said that the gay community "is a cult of abomination. That is clear. It is an abomination. The Torah sentences it to death. It is in the first line of serious sins. They say 'tendency,' 'perversion' -- nonsense." The Reform Jewish community, which Amar called "evil" in the interview, also responded Thursday in a statement. A Reform spokesman said, "Rabbi Amar again proves he is undeserving of the title of chief rabbi of the city of Jerusalem. His remarks, which are nothing more than baseless hatred peppered with ignorance, harm Israeli men and women, Jewish men and women who pay for his public salary. "Rabbi Amar also knows full well that as he speaks obscenities, his remarks alienate more and more communities from the unenlightened Judaism that he represents, and at the exact same time, tomorrow morning, the Reform movement will ordain new male and female rabbis who will join the hundreds of Reform community rabbis in Israel. And so, while Rabbi Amar alienates, the Reform communities in Israel -- who accept every Jew with love and equality -- bring people closer to Judaism, and grow and grow stronger day by day."
