Shalom Dov Wolpo

He has become associated in recent years with right-wing political causes, and has set up a campaign group—SOS Israel—an organization that runs press and billboard campaigns promoting the belief that surrender of parts of the Land of Israel is prohibited by halacha. Later, in 2008, Wolpo established an additional group opposing land concessions, Our Land of Israel.

On 11 November 2008, Wolpo founded a new party, Eretz Yisrael Shelanu. The party allied itself with the Jewish National Front, and ran in the 2009 Knesset elections as part of the National Union alliance. Eretz Yisrael Shelanu took one of the party's four seats, taken by Michael Ben-Ari.

Another campaign run by his organization, under the slogan "There is Judgement, and there is a Judge" (referring to God), has generated considerable controversy in the Israeli press in March 2007. One radio host, Natan Zahavi, denounced Wolpo on the radio in obscene terms, and the Israeli Broadcasting Authority is currently investigating.

In February 2007, Wolpo appealed a decision that a political campaign under the slogan "If anyone comes to remove me from my home, I will chop off their hands" amounted to incitement to violence, since retired Supreme Court Justice Mishael Cheshin vowed to defend the Supreme Court, which he said was dear to him, with all his strength, saying, "If someone raises a hand against my house, I will cut it off", and he wasn't accused of anything. The slogan was meant to protest the removal of Jewish settlers from their West Bank homes.

In 2007, he told a conference in Jerusalem that "the remedy for the disengagement is to understand that the State of Israel is a terrible thing. We should not bless or praise the state that was founded by criminals and heretics like Herzl."

In December 2007, Wolpo stated that his followers will secede from Israel if the Israeli government withdraws from the West Bank. It is unclear which part of Israel Wolpo and his followers would claim, or how they would achieve autonomous status.

In January 2006, he wrote a letter to Olmert warning him that if he ever gave up even a "tiny parcel" of the Land of Israel, he would suffer from a bitter fate. The letter noted that Rabbi Schneerson had warned that he would personally fight with all his powers against any Prime Minister who gave up Israeli territory or backpedaled over settlements. He told the press that Ariel Sharon had brought about a "new holocaust" with the Gaza disengagement, and that he had gladly "collaborated with the Nazis of today". He ruled that assisting in the evacuation of the Gaza settlement was as bad as violating the Jewish Sabbath. He called for Olmert to be "brought to trial and punished".

In 2006, Wolpo defended Rabbi David Drukman, chief rabbi of Kiryat Motzkin, over charges that he had abused his position as a state employee to incite violence. Wolpo said: "Rabbi Drukman will go down in history as someone who stood up to a vile government fearlessly."

During the 2006 Second Lebanon War, he told the local Kiryat Gat weekly that, "Olmert has declared war against God and against His Torah", and that he should be brought to justice. He added that the war should continue "until the enemy has been totally eradicated".

In 2006, offered a free copy of one of his book "From Light to Darkness" to anyone that pledged to refrain from celebrating Independence Day.

He was active in the protest movement in 2005 that fought the disengagement from Gaza. Following the failure of that campaign, he organized a rabbinical conference entitled "We shall never forget, and we shall never forgive". After the Second Lebanon War, Wolpo organized a publicity campaign with the slogan "We Told You So" that distributed over a million brochures. He was also responsible for a poster campaign promising that those responsible for Israel's actions during the war would be "punished from Heaven".

Wolpo arranged an elaborate award ceremony for Sergeant Hananel Dayan (son of Yosef Dayan), who was disciplined for refusing to shake the hand of Israeli Chief of Staff Dan Halutz. The soldier was protesting the forced eviction of his grandparents from their Gaza home in 2005.

In an interview with Israeli Channel 2 evening news in March 1994, Wolpo told an interviewer that Rabbi Schneerson's place as the Messiah and the fact of his "eternal life" was "as secure as the rising of the sun in the morning".

Rabbi Wolpo is one of the leaders of the group of Chabad Chasidim believing that the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, is the messiah. He was one of the first to openly describe Rabbi Schneerson as the Messiah. In 1984, he wrote a book proclaiming the Rebbe as the Moshiach. However, after a public address by Rabbi Schneerson in which he said that "such a book can cause hundreds of Jews to stop learning Chassidus, and oppose the Baal Shem Tov and his teachings", he did not publish the book. The book was later published in 1991 with Rabbi Schneerson's blessings.

In 1979, on the instructions of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, he published his first book Da'at Torah, a polemic against returning lands captured by Israel. He was active in the protests that surrounded the forced eviction of Yamit, as per the Rebbe's instructions to him, and in 1982, he published the book Shalom, Shalom, Ve'ain Shalom that argued that peace with Arabs was impossible, and no discussions concerning concessions may be held.

Rabbi Shalom Dov Wolpo, also Sholom Ber Wolpe, (Hebrew: שלום דוב וולפא, born 1948) is a rabbi and an Israeli political activist. Wolpo is the author of more than forty books.