Rabbi Yosef curses the 'Palestinians'
Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, the Shas party's spiritual leader who once advocated 'land for peace,' cursed 'moderate' 'Palestinian' President Senior Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, in his weekly lecture on Saturday night, said that he hope Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas and the people he represents would disappear. “May Abu Mazen and all those evil people be utterly destroyed. May G-d strike them, and the evil Palestinians, with a plague,” he said.JPost adds:
Shas veteran Yehuda Avidan responded by saying that anyone who knows Yosef knows that there is no one who wants and seeks peace more than him. Avidan explained that the rabbi sees the Palestinians as Israel's enemies but wants there to be peace.I don't believe that the Rabbi needs defending. I believe that he is being quite sensible.
Until now Yosef has steered clear of commenting on anything related to diplomatic negotiations. At the end of the 1980s Yosef ruled that the country should seek peace, even at the price of painful concessions, given the supremacy of the Jewish value of 'pikuakh nefesh' (saving of life).
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:58 PM
6 Comments:
A rabbi, as a "spriritual leader qualified to expound on Jewish law", is not a spokesperson for G-d (or the whole community). Therefore, a curse from this man is an expression of exasperation and carries no attempted Dumbledore powers (despite that photo!).
For those of us who grew up with Priests and/or Popes as representatives or intermediaries between people and G-d, a curse like this may express a different meaning than the Jewish concept of Rabbi (which concept BTW is one of the brilliant parts of Judaism).
Sunlight, words can have cosmological consequences, whether coming from fools or wise men or anything in between.
Take 2 classic biblical examples:
1. Isaac's blessing of Jacob
2. Bilaam's attempted cursing of Israel.
It has nothing to do with Harry Potter spells. I has to do with judgments and justice.
And, yes, a rabbi can be a spokesman for his community. If they don't like it, they can fire or abandon him.
He only cursed the terrorists, not any Gazan who wants peace - IOW, he did the same as anyone else who hates evil! (If only he DID have "Dumbledore-like powers"!)
Pikuakh nefesh is the opposite of land for peace. No military leader would ever trade land for peace; giving the enemy a superior place to strike from while hoping they stop being your enemy is nonsensical to anyone with a reasonable mind.
When the enemy is Islam, and one has read the Koran [understanding what is "Naskh"/non-applicable "revelations" from an earlier part of Mohamed's life as a "prophet"], the Hadith collections [Mohamed quotes] and the Siras [Mohamed biographies], and is familiar the sharia [law] from the different fiqh [schools of Islam], as well as what "taqiyya" [obligated lying to further Islam by concealing Islamic belief, eg, "Islam is peaceful"], and "kitman" [obligated half-truths to further Islam, eg, "the Koran says nice things about Jews"] are, one realizes there is 100% no hope of peace with Islam, and 100% no reason to take anything Muslims say as truth.
In addition to this, its against Halakcha to cede land for peace:
"The Code of Jewish Law (Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 329:6) states:
When there is a [Jewish] city close to the border, then, even if [enemies mount an attack, although they] come only for the purpose of [taking] straw and stubble, we should [take up arms] and desecrate the Sabbath because of them. For [if we do not prevent their coming] they may conquer the city, and from there the [rest of the] land will be easy for them to conquer." -- How many times in Jewish history has a situation existed where this part of the Shulchan Aruch has been applicable? Clearly this halakcha's purpose is in the current moment.
Interesting Obama's State Department found the time to condemn Rabbi Yosef but has not a word to say about Abu Bluff's piling on one roadblock after another to peace.
We can't have honest criticism of the Palestinians because its not politically correct to chastise them for their bigotry against Jews.
What did he say that was so terrible?
Rabbi Yosef shlita approved of "land for peace" back when almost everyone (except Kach-niks) thought it could actually work.
When it failed, Rabbi Yosef and Shas came out against it.
Rabbi Yosef's comments are based in the biblical verse "those who curse you I shall curse". Amen!
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