Israel’s Justice Ministry said it received more than 100 complaints of incitement against the rabbi.
Rabat – Israeli Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef angered many Jews after calling the ex-Soviet Jewish community in Israel “communist, religion-hating goys,” referring to gentiles, or people who are not Jewish.
A video published by Ynet news on Tuesday shows the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel denouncing gentiles.
The rabbi said in the video that a large number of gentiles live in Israel. He asserted that many of them are “hostile” and “haters” of religion.
He said that they the “goys” vote for people that “incite against the ultra-Orthodox and against religion.
“Hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands of goys came to Israel under the Law of Return,” he argued at a rabbinical gathering last week in Jerusalem. “They are not Jews at all.”
The Law of Return is an Israeli law, established on July 5, 1950, that gives Jews the right to come to Israel and gain Israeli citizenship upon arrival.
Section 1 of the Law of Return declares:
“Every Jew has the right to come to this country as an oleh [immigrant].”
In March 2016, Yosef stipulated that gentiles should not live in Israel, but that non-Jews are allowed in Israel to serve the Jewish population.
Los Angeles Times reported that the Justice Ministry of Israel received more than 100 complaints of incitement against the rabbi.
In the past, the controversial rabbi has called for religious Jews to keep their children away from secular or traditional members of their family because they could be a negative influence. Yosef also allegedly likened people of black African descent to monkeys in March 2018.
Times of Israel reported that the Israeli party Yisrael Beytenu asked the Attorney General of Israel Avichai Mandelblit to open an investigation into Yosef’s comments, accusing him of doubting the Jewishness of immigrants from the former Soviet Union.
