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- ISRAEL'S leading political rabbi was condemned by millions
of people yesterday after claiming that the victims of the Holocaust were
reincarnated Jewish sinners who had to die to atone for their misdeeds.
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- Rabbi Ovadia Yosef: remarks "do not befit a rabbi
of his stature", said Ehud Barak
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- Rabbi Ovadia Yosef appeared to absolve Hitler of blame
for the death of six million Jews. He upset not only Holocaust survivors
but also the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, whom he called brainless,
and the Arabs, whom he described as "snakes". Rabbi Ovadia said
in a sermon on Saturday night that Hitler's victims were "reincarnations
of the souls of sinners, people who transgressed and did all sorts of things
which should not be done. They had been incarnated in order to atone."
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- Mr Barak, who lost one set of grandparents in the Holocaust,
said that the remarks "do not befit a rabbi of his stature" and
were liable to harm the memory of those who had died. Tommy Lapid, the
head of a small secular party who escaped the Nazis as a child, called
the 79-year-old rabbi "an old fool" who had given support to
Hitler's view that the Jews were sinful.
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- He said: "He has killed for a second time my father,
who died in Mauthausen concentration camp, and my grandmother who died
in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. If the Austrian nationalist leader, Jörg
Haidar, had said this, we would have declared war on Austria."
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- The Rabbi's sermon opened up the most painful split in
Israeli society: between the Ashkenazi Jews of European origin and the
Sephardim, who come from the Middle East and north Africa and were generally
beyond Hitler's reach. Rabbi Ovadia is the spiritual leader of the Shas
party, which represents Sephardic Jews and has 17 seats in parliament,
giving it the balance of power between Left and Right.
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- His weekly sermons, blending an explosive mixture of
religion and politics, are broadcast all over Israel by radio. The sermon
was a rebuff to Mr Barak, who has been hoping for help from Shas to rebuild
his defunct ruling coalition so that he can reopen stalled peace talks.
Referring to Mr Barak's offer to share Jerusalem with the Palestinians
as part of peace settlement, the rabbi said: "Where are his brains?
He runs a mad dash after [the Palestinians]. Is this peace? There should
be security for the people of Israel."
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- He said to Mr Barak: "You are bringing snakes close
to us. Will we make peace with a snake?" God, he said, regretted every
day that he had created the sons of Ishmael, as the Arabs are known in
the Bible. Yasser Abd-Rabbo, the Palestinian information minister, said:
"Every Israeli stands accused of racism until he condemns this racist
and idiot."
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- The rabbi's defenders said that he was giving a spiritual
explanation of the Holocaust and that European Jews did not have a monopoly
on interpreting the tragedy.
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