With renewed peace talks about to begin between the Israelis and the Palestinians, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, one of the country’s top Mizrahi rabbis and the spiritual leader of the Shas political party (an ultra-orthodox party of Jews descended from immigrants from Arab countries), took the opportunity to declare Palestinian Mahmoud Abbas “evil” and pray that God would strike down Abbas and the Palestinian people.
The statement was so outrageous even Abe Foxman denounced it.
The Iraqi-born Yosef, who is 89 years old, didn’t used to be so hawkish, let alone insane. So some of it may be age. Last year he got people in an uproar by suggesting those murdered in the Holocaust were reincarnated sinners from earlier generations. But it also reflects the transition of the Mizrahi Jews toward most intense territorial maximalism over recent decades.
