Israel Matzav

For those who don't yet know enough about Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef zt"l

In 1979, amid peace negotiations between Israel and Egypt, Rabbi Yosef ruled that pikuach nefesh granted Israel authority to return the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt.

Shas, however, abstained in a vote on the first Oslo agreement with the Palestinians, and voted against the second. Furthermore, as relations between Israel and the Palestinians began to deteriorate, and specifically following the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2001, Rabbi Yosef and Shas pulled toward the rightwing of the Israeli political spectrum, supporting the Likud. In 2005, Rabbi Yosef condemned the Gaza disengagement plan spearheaded by then-prime minister Ariel Sharon, saying that he was opposed to unilateral action outside the framework of a peace agreement. Yosef instructed the Shas MKs to vote against the plan in the Knesset.

Yosef has also made several controversial comments regarding Israeli politicians as well as world leaders. During Purim 2000, he said that then-education minister Yossi Sarid was cursed as was Haman. In 2005, Yosef commented that Ariel Sharon was “torturing” the people of Israel with his plan to disengage from the Gaza Strip. “Let God strike him down,” Yosef was quoted in a BBC article as saying at the time. However, after Sharon suffered a stroke and fell into a coma, Yosef led prayer services for his recovery, explaining that he was opposed to the disengagement plan and not to Sharon himself.

Following Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005, Rabi Yosef blamed the natural disaster on then-U.S. President Bush's support of the Gaza disengagement, as well as on the lack of Torah study among Katrina's victims, who suffered “because they have no God.”

Labels: Ariel Sharon, Gaza expulsion, George W. Bush, Middle East peace process, Oslo accords, Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:59 PM