Hibernate Validator 4.3 depends upon EL 2.2 won't work with Tomcat 6.0.33 comes with EL 2.1
That's not correct. Hibernate Validator 5.x depends on EL. You can find more information on how to get Validator 5 working on Tomcat here - http://hibernate.org/validator/faq/#does-hibernate-validator-5-x-work-with-tomcat-6. However, it will require that you update the libraries.
In the case of Hibernate Validator 4.3, no EL libraries are needed.