The titular head of the leading Mizrahi political party, Shas, has publicly stated his opposition to an Iran attack (Hebrew). Rabbi Ovadia Yosef is not just the spiritual leader of Orthodox Mizrahi Jews, he’s also the godfather of its political movement. His senior cabinet representative, Eli Yishai, will therefore oppose any effort to attack Iran. Yisahi is also one of the eight most senior cabinet members who will have the decisive vote on whether to attack. Shas is one of the largest of the governing coalition members aside from Likud, and therefore commands a great deal of authority. If there is an attack, Bibi Netanyahu risks a split in his coalition, though it’s not clear Shas would leave should there be one.
Amnon Abramovitch, the respected political correspondent of Israel’s Channel 2 news, reports this story in Yediot Achronot (not available online). But he precedes it with a recitation of a long list of errors, disasters and miscalculations credited to either Bibi or Barak while each was prime minister: including the second Intifada, the 2000 withdrawal from Lebanon, the failed assassination of Khaled Meshal, the Mavi Marmara massacre, the only cancelled IDF chief of staff nomination in Israeli history, failed negotiations with Syria, etc.
He quotes an especially outrageous recent claim by Barak:
The Iranian response to our attack won’t be 50,000 dead, nor 5,000, not even 500 if people would just stay inside their homes.
The journalist asks, with more than a hint of sarcasm, what if the war between Israel doesn’t even last as long as the eight years of the Iran-Iraq war; what if, say, it only last two or three years. Are we not supposed to leave our homes the whole time?
The message is clear: these are the “adults” whom Israel has chosen to lead them into this war with Iran. These are the ones with the vision and operational capabilities to conduct this war and lead it to its successful conclusion. Abramovitch states clearly (though it isn’t clear whether he means this ironically or seriously) Bibi and Barak are among the best of what Israel has to offer. The journalist’s clear conclusion is that if this is our best, then we are indeed in a sorry state. Given their abysmal track record, what makes anyone think that the next war will end any differently than the list of failures outlined above?
That’s where Ovadia Yoself comes in. Abramovitch calls him the only “responsible adult” among all of the Israeli leadership. He means this slightly ironically as well, since Yoself is known for his iconoclastic, odd views in which, like Pat Robertson, he blames the world’s catastrophes on Israel’s sinning in the eyes of God. Similarly, he blamed Ariel Sharon’s stroke on his withdrawal from Gaza. The implicit statement is: if Yosef is the sole responsible adult among this bunch, boy are we in trouble. But he is responsible and as such should be heeded, at least on this matter.
Bibi and Barak have done their best to whisper their words of strategy and enticement into the Rabbi’s ears in order to persuade him of the necessity of an attack. But he seems to be having none of it. He treats them like little chicks whose eyes aren’t even yet open. And given their track record, they don’t deserve much more consideration than that. Despite the fact that Yosef is an aged leader and Bibi and Barak may long for the day when he will be gathered to his ancestors, that day hasn’t yet arrived. Until it does, Yosef will be not just a thorn in their side in this matter, but a profound impediment to their plans.
At the age of 91, Yosef seems to be the only responsible adult exercising any judgment in running the country. The older he is, the more responsible. If only some of that sagacity would rub off on his youngers, Israel’s two political hot shots so eager for war against Iran.
On a related subject, Iran exposed the identity of one of Mossad’s key intelligence operatives inside Azerbijian who has been responsible for a good deal of the mayhem happening inside the former nation. He is Ja’far Khoshzaban, and Iran has called upon Azerbijian to arrest him and has also called for that country to stop giving free rein to Israeli intelligence operations targeted against it. An Iranian majlis member has accused Azeri government officials of aiding and abetting CIA and Mossad activities inside the country which led to the most recent assassination of an Iranian scientist.
If there is a large Israeli intelligence presence inside Azerbijian, this would explain why Iran and/or Hezbollah might’ve wanted to plant a bomb in the Israeli embassy there. Israel and Azerbijian claim to have disrupted such a plot recently. For its part, many in the senior echelons of the Azeri government are calling for closer ties with western intelligence agencies, which would strengthen Iran’s fears of plots against it emanating from there.
If one goes by track record, Ovadia Yosef also has one: The Oslo agreements. Of course, Barak can be counted as igniting the Oslo war. Bibi is kind of clean here, kind of.
Yes, but Yosef wasn’t a PM and Barak & Bibi were & so were able to create far more fashlas than Yosef. That’s one of Abramovitch’s major points in his article.
“Responsible adult” seems slightly ridiculous. Some of his other public statements…
On Muslims – “They’re stupid. Their religion is as ugly as they are,”
On women – ‘Women should stick to cooking, sewing’
On Palestinians – “All Palestinians should perish”
You must be pretty desperate for a beacon of light if you’re holding this guy up. He’s not even a flicker in the dark.
You forgot ‘the Goyim exist to serve the Jews’.
That’s a personal favourite of mine, since many Goyim seem to live by this: Gingrich et al.
I should amend that Gingrich et al serving ‘Israel’. Not ‘the Jews’. I know many Jews would vomit if that were the case.
It’s amazing how your views of Yosef would morph overnight into respect & admiration if he approved of attacking Iran.
What are you talking about? I’m all for opposition on attacking Iran. But holding up Yosef as a sensible source is a mistake.
If it will stop an attack on Iran, I’m prepared to accept the Rabbi’s help.
You can’t see everything the Azeris do and say solely in terms of Iran: they also have fraught and nervous relations with Russia and other former Soviet Republics. Not to mention the Turkish mafia seeing their country as a trade route.
They probably do want and need help, from somewhere, with all of this, especially in the year when Mr Putin is trying to return to the Russian presidency.
Protecting about the only country in the region not actively raising tensions, does not seem wildly unreasonable to me.
There wouldn’t happen to be a link for the documents that Iran used to identify the alleged Mossad agent somewhere, would there? I tried searching for them on the net, but didn’t find one. There’s no mention of PressTV actually seeing the documents; I’m also skeptical of news from state-run companies, and ones with the ‘reputation’ that PreeTV has.
[comment deleted–if you publish another comment like this one you will not publish any comments here again]
I tried to ask my Israeli source about confirming the ID of this Mossad asset. But for various reasons I can’t go into, I couldn’t get the question answered.
Press TV has as much or more credibility than Jerusalem Post.
[comment deleted for being off-topic–read and respect the comment rules]
English translation of Rabbi Ovadyas statement from the a7 article you are linking to above:
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef: No need to attack Iran
Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, first weekly lesson addressed the issue of Iran.
“In every generation they stand up to finish us off and God saves us. Now there’s a “Haman” in “Persia and Media”. This is perhaps a reincarnation of [the original] Haman. We have noomne to rely on, only on our Heavenly Father. Pray to God to see what the faithful are thousands who engage in Torah that was never as many Yeshivos.
Rabbi Yosef added “No need to attack Iran, not attack, God will fight for you and you hold your peace. Trust in God. I saw an evil tyrant and behold he is no more. Like it was done to Haman so it will be done to him he will go to gehenom (hell).
All the other stuff is commentary. The operative statement is “No need to attack Iran.” Proof of the pudding will be in Eli Yishai’s No vote in the ministerial forum. You can dress this up any way you want, but he’s calling for no attack on Iran. Deal with it.
It seems Rabbi Ovadia Yosef who preached the annihilation of Arabs in 2001 – must be affraid to be recorded as the new Mordechai, who fought modern Haman (Ahmadinejad) – and got 72,000 Israeli Jews killed.
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2011/03/05/iran-may-get-a-new-queen-esther/
Perhaps in a less mystical language, “The regime in Tehran is nasty, but eventually it will change. [Trust G.d] If we attack now, we will be alone, and it will not work. It is better to trust G.d [then the boychicks Bibi and Ehud].
Yosef could be also impressed by the recent announcement of Russians that they finished upgrading radars in Syria to have capability of monitoring air traffic from Cyprus to northern Saudi territories. Attacking targets in Iran that are build specifically as a trap for Israeli planes (and actually containing rather few centrifuges etc.) is not a good idea.
One thing that Israeli simply do not comprehend is that Israel deeply crossed Russia (and Putin as a person) by helping Shaakashvili prepare his attack on Ossetia. Moreover, USA crossed Russia in several ways, of which least justifiable is installation of anti-ballistic missile radars. Russians perceive that USA tries to obtain “first strike” capability. So is there any way Russia can cause reciprocal pain? Installing best radars from their inventory gives some feeling of symmetry. And if Israel looses some planes, Russians can get quite a few orders.
Of course, we can be quite skeptical about Ovadia Yosef. However, within largely militaristic Israeli establishment, Shas is a non-militaristic exception.
ALSO SEE: On Iran, U.S. Jews will defend Israel down to last drop of our blood, by Larry Derfner, 972mag.com, 2/25/12
If you think Israeli leaders are hawkish on Iran, listen to what some of these American Jewish leaders had to say at their get-together in Jerusalem.
LINK – http://972mag.com/defending-israel-down-to-the-last-drop-of-israeli-blood/36370/