MK Tzvi Succot (Religious Zionism), chairman of the Knesset Subcommittee on Judea and Samaria Affairs, sent an unusual letter this week to the Chief Rabbis and members of the Chief Rabbinate Council, warning of a serious loophole in the kashrut (kosher supervision) system.<\/p>\n
According to Succot, importers purchase meat in Palestinian Authority territories, obtain a kashrut certificate from the Chief Rabbinate to pass customs – and then sell some of the meat back to Jews. <\/p>\n
Last Thursday, the Chief Rabbinate\u2019s Kashrut Committee held a special meeting on the topic of kosher meat imports to the Palestinian Authority.<\/p>\n
Ahead of that meeting at the Chief Rabbinate Council, Succot notified the Chief Rabbis and council members of an emergency session on the matter, saying: \u201cI will soon hold a discussion in a Knesset committee and would be happy for Chief Rabbinate representatives to participate so we can find a solution to the problem of meat smuggling.\u201d<\/p>\n
Succot explained that he has dealt several times with the issue of meat smuggling into the State of Israel’s territory, under the label \u201cgoods transferred to the Palestinian Authority.\u201d He noted that according to the State Comptroller\u2019s report, 57% of meat destined for the PA from abroad never actually entered PA territory – and was instead sold within the sovereign territory of the State of Israel.<\/p>\n
Succot emphasized to the rabbis: \u201cAccording to the law, once a kosher certificate is issued for the imported meat, the importer can legally sell it as \u2018kosher\u2019 within the State of Israel\u2019s borders without violating the \u2018Kosher Fraud Prohibition Law.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
He added, \u201cSince the matter under discussion was brought to my attention, I felt it appropriate to share with the esteemed rabbis the serious concern that issuing kashrut certificates for meat supposedly intended for the Palestinian Authority could, God forbid, worsen the problem of meat being smuggled and marketed as kosher – thereby creating a de facto bypass of the Chief Rabbinate\u2019s oversight of meat entering Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MK Tzvi Succot (Religious Zionism), chairman of the Knesset Subcommittee on Judea and Samaria Affairs, sent an unusual…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253677,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[97,17038,28508,269,77690,137836],"class_list":{"0":"post-253676","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nutrition","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-kosher-food","10":"tag-meat","11":"tag-nutrition","12":"tag-palestinian-authority","13":"tag-tzvi-succot"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253676\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}