Reactions in the Arab Media to Statements by Former Israeli Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef against PA President and the Palestinians

In a weekly lesson delivered before the New Year, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of the Israeli Shas party, said: "May our enemies and those who hate us, Abu Mazen [PA President Mahmoud Abbas] and all those evil people, perish from the world. May God strike them down with plague – them and those Palestinians, the evil enemies of Israel."[1] This generated an angry backlash in the Arab media, including claims that Rabbi Ovadia Yosef represents the Israeli government and that his statements reflect Israel's true intentions vis-à-vis the peace talks. Voices were also heard saying that unlike in the case of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, if an Arab leader had made similar declarations, he would have been denounced by the entire Western world.

Following are excerpts from several articles dealing with this matter:

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef Expresses the Israeli Government's Position Regarding Peace

Many writers expressed the view that Rabbi Ovadia Yosef was not merely voicing his personal opinion, but was reflecting the true stance of the Israeli government toward peace.

PLO Chief Negotiator Saeb Erekat said that this was an affront to the Palestinian peace efforts and a clear call for the annihilation of the Palestinians: "... Rabbi Ovadia [Yosef] calls for the assassination of the Palestinian president, [Mahmoud] Abbas, who in several days will sit at the negotiations table face to face with Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu. Is this the way the Israeli government is preparing its people for the signing of a peace settlement with the Palestinians?!... At a time when the PLO is preparing, in all seriousness and with good intentions, to resume negotiations, one of the main coalition parties in Israel calls for the annihilation of the Palestinian people. This is an affront to all the efforts we have invested in order to promote the peace process."[2]

The Saudi daily Al-Madina wrote: "What is salient in these Israeli declarations is not just their blatantly racist character, but their publication only several days before the inauguration of the direct talks, scheduled for the coming Wednesday [September 1, 2010] in Washington. To a great extent, this reflects Israel's intentions vis-à-vis these talks, especially since the Shas party, to which Ovadia [Yosef] belongs, is in the government coalition. In other words, the publication of such a declaration as the talks draw near is a racist attempt at incitement. It reflects the position of the extremist right, which rules in Israel, toward the peace process, which Ovadia [Yosef] and his ilk are trying to thwart at any cost."[3]

Columnist Rashid Hassan wrote in an article titled "The Nazi Rabbi" in the Jordanian Al-Dustour daily: "The perpetration of massacres for over 60 years highlights [the fact] that the enemy army has wholeheartedly embraced the outlook of Ovadia Yosef and is implementing it. One cannot but note that the wish [expressed] by this hostile and grudge-bearing [individual] was timed to coincide with [Israeli PM] Netanyahu's declaration – on the eve of his trip to Washington in order to participate in the direct talks – that [construction] in the settlements would continue, and with his call to the PA to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, [a call] that entails the abrogation of the Right of Return. It should be noted that the rabbi's wish serves the [interests] of Netanyahu, who uses it as a buffer wall in order to alleviate the international pressure upon him... by claiming that any violation of his agreement with the [religious] parties would lead to dissolution of the coalition..."[4]

Palestinian columnist 'Adel 'Abd Al-Rahman wrote: "Ovadia [Yosef] does not represent himself or his party alone, but the stream that rules the racist Israeli apartheid state. This clearly indicates that the government of Binyamin Netanyahu and its coalition members are not interested in reaching a settlement or in the two-state option."[5]

The Rabbi's Statements are Representative of Israeli Society

Another claim that has surfaced in various articles is that Rabbi Ovadia Yosef's racist comments are representative of Israeli society as a whole and that other Israeli leaders have made similar comments.

An article titled "What Would Have Happened If That Nazi Had Been a Palestinian?", in the Al-Quds Al-Arabi daily, stated: "Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of the Shas party, did not surprise us in his sermons... This man represents a prominent trend within Israel... The Chief Rabbi of the Israeli army issued an official fatwa to soldiers [instructing them] not to show mercy to the Palestinians during the recent aggression in the Gaza Strip. Moreover, Israeli politicians in the government and the Knesset, such as Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and MK Tzipi Livni, have demanded, more than once, the expulsion of the Palestinians living in the 1948 'occupied territories,' the denial of their right to citizenship – and consequently their presence [in the country] – because they are considered alien in Israel, which is a state for Jews only."[6]

Rashid Hassan wrote in his Al-Dustour article: "Most of the rabbis are no better than this Ovadia. They are all cut from the same cloth, the cloth of hatred and fairytales... This madness has become characteristic of Israeli society. Rafael Eitan, the former chief of staff of the enemy army, who was one of the leaders of the aggression against Lebanon in 1982 and who participated, along with the terrorist Sharon, in the massacre in Sabra and Shatila, described the Arabs in the ugliest manner..."[7]

The Saudi Al-Madina daily stated that this is not the first such statement to have been made by Ovadia Yosef, and that other Israeli religious and political leaders have made similar statements: "...This rabbi, who is hostile to the Palestinians and the Arabs, is used to making racist declarations in the religious sermons that he delivers on the Sabbath. [Thus,] in a sermon in May 2000, he said that the Arabs are cockroaches that must be destroyed and called them 'worse than snakes.' It is interesting that [he made] these statements only days after a Jewish rabbi, called Elitzur, from the settlement of Yitzhar south of Nablus, published a book that permitted the killing of the 'Palestinian enemy,' and especially its children, 'so that they wouldn't be brought up on the hatred of Israel,' as he put it. Some of us may recall a statement made by former Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin about his nightly dream to awaken and discover that Gaza had drowned in the sea..."[8]

The Rabbi's Statements are Identical to Hitler's

The Al-Quds Al-Arabi daily compared Ovadia Yosef's statement to the declarations of Adolf Hitler, which are also based on hatred of the other, and wondered why the West was not denouncing this Jewish racism: "There is no difference between Rabbi Ovadia Yosef's incitement to exterminate the Palestinians and [the calls of] Nazi leader Hitler, who incited to exterminate the Jews. They are both based on the principle of racist hatred and on [the principle] of annihilating the other. The only difference is that the former is a Jewish religious leader, whose country has the support of the civilized Western world, [and therefore] can kill, destroy, and massacre with no restraint and without the tiniest condemnation. It is above all laws and norms, as long as its victims are Arabs and Muslims.

"Global Zionism perpetrated [acts of] extortion and condemnation of the ugliest kind against anybody who even attempted to cast doubt on the Nazi Holocaust or the number [of victims]. It has always used, in a terrorist way, the pretext of antisemitism in order to destroy and eliminate anybody who criticizes the criminal deeds of Israel against the Arabs [in general] and against the Palestinians in particular. Regretfully, the civilized Western world has always given in to these extortion methods. We have not heard a single word of condemnation against the Jewish racism that incites to the destruction of a small Arab people whose land was plundered with the encouragement [of the West] and the majority of which lives in the diaspora. Those who remained in the homeland face massacres and war crimes and daily separation [of families] at the hands of the victims of the Nazi holocaust."[9]

Hafez Al-Barghouti, editor of the PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, compared Ovadia Yosef to Abu Qatada, the spiritual leader of Al-Qaeda in Europe: "If a Muslim sheikh called Abu Qatada had uttered words like those uttered by Ovadia [Yosef], the world would have been up in arms against him, would have plucked out his beard hair by hair, and would have made his wives divorce him. [U.S.] Congress would have demanded his castration to prevent him from begetting offspring. Civil organizations, full of Americans and Europeans, would have laid in wait for him and accused him of being ignorant, despicable, and stupid, and of maintaining secret ties with Al-Qaeda."[10]

Endnotes: