The interview that Rabbi Eyal Krim gave Haaretz’s Amos Harel was held in 2000, before the second intifada, before the withdrawal from Lebanon. Krim was a civilian, a reserve commander who taught at the Ateret Jerusalem yeshiva in the Old City’s Muslim Quarter. Ateret Jerusalem is connected to the settler organization Ateret Cohanim.
The interview was held three years before Krim started answering religious questions regularly on the religious website Kipa. […]

How can one explain the gap in his positions? Who is the real Eyal Krim? One could solve the question that in one place he was giving an interview to Haaretz, and was perhaps trying to curry favor among a secular, liberal crowd, and in the other he appeared on a partisan website catering to the religious community. It is the right answer, but not a full one. The answer is probably both. […]

Krim sparked many questions stemming mainly from his positions as he expressed them in Kipa. The truth is that anyone who ever dealt with the Bible, halakha or midrash dealt in subjects that would look to a person on the outside as racist and chauvinist, but Krim was exceptional and it is very hard to resolve as neutral “words of Torah” his answers that take the side of killing disarmed terrorists, his treatment of gay people as “sick” or the understanding that he showed in refusing an order. There is a clear agenda. Does this disqualify him from being the IDF chief rabbi? The matter demands a thorough explanation from the High Court of Justice.