Israeli police briefly detained a leading rabbi as part of a widening probe into a treatise suspected of inciting the murder of Arabs

The investigation has pitted authorities in the Jewish state against far-right West Bank settlers and has led to scuffles outside government institutions in Jerusalem and a sit-down protest that choked off the main highway to Tel Aviv. Rabbi Yaacov Yosef was seized by detectives on his way back from morning prayers, witnesses said, in a tactic similar to the arrest of a senior West Bank rabbi whose followers responded with street protests. The Jewish clerics had ignored a police summons to be questioned over endorsements for The King's Doctrine, a book written by a settler rabbi offering justifications from scripture for killing innocent gentiles during religious war. "Revenge, including strikes on the blameless and on babies, is necessary and important in fighting and defeating evil," read one passage.