Head of Shas’s Council of Torah Sages: Non-Jews exist only to serve Jews
The Jerusalem Post reported Tuesday the disturbing comments of one Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the head of Shas’s Council of Torah Sages and a senior Sephardi adjudicator. Now, Mr. Yosef is no stranger to controversy. You may remember back in August the diplomatic ruckus he caused when he wished a plague upon the Palestinian people, an embarrassing gaffe for which he was rightly forced to issue a retraction. Yet it appears the Rabbi is caught once again with his pants down, foot in mouth. According to the Post:
“Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel,” he said in his weekly Saturday night sermon on the laws regarding the actions non-Jews are permitted to perform on Shabbat.
According to Yosef, the lives of non-Jews in Israel are safeguarded by divinity, to prevent losses to Jews.
“In Israel, death has no dominion over them… With gentiles, it will be like any person – they need to die, but [God] will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one’s donkey would die, they’d lose their money.
This is his servant… That’s why he gets a long life, to work well for this Jew,” Yosef said.
“Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat.
That is why gentiles were created,” he added.
Strange and disturbing comments, indeed, coming from a man of Yahweh. But what if he were Muslim?
First, we’d expect “Police Blotter scholar” Robert Spencer to have his panties in a bunch, as he usually does, with screaming alarmist headlines such as:
SHARIA-JIHADIST CLERIC SAYS DHIMMIS EXIST TO SERVE MECCA!
Or…
ISLAMOFASCIST MISUNDERSTANDS RELIGION OF LOVE AND PEACE!
Then we’d expect to hear Pam “Clinically Paranoid” Geller convulsing with botox spasms, shrieking at the top of her lungs with headlines like:
ISLAMIC SUPREMACIST COMPARES DHIMMI SLAVES TO DONKEYS!
Or…
HEAD OF ISLAMIST-TERRORIST SHARIA COUNCIL SAYS DHIMMIS WILL PLOW AND REAP!
Then, we’d expect to hear the same familiar charges echoed ad nauseum throughout the anti-Muslim blogosphere: “Islam wants to take over America” “All Muslims are terrorists” “There is no moderate Islam” etc. etc. But these comments aren’t coming from a jihadist cleric; they’re coming from a well-known Rabbi. The hypocritical double standard should be obvious to anyone paying attention.
With utmost certainty, we’d NEVER hear from Spencer or Geller the other side of the story: the mainstream moderate Muslims. We here at loonwatch want everyone to peacefully co-exist regardless of religion, race, or color; so we are quite sure the Rabbi’s incendiary comments do not represent mainstream moderate Jews. As the Jewish Telegraph Agencyreports:
The American Jewish Committee condemned the rabbi’s remarks in a statement issued Monday.
“Rabbi Yosef’s remarks — suggesting outrageously that Jewish scripture asserts non-Jews exist to serve Jews — are abhorrent and an offense to human dignity and human equality,” said AJC Executive Director David Harris. “Judaism first taught the world that all individuals are created in the divine image, which helped form the basis of our moral code. A rabbi should be the first, not the last, to reflect that bedrock teaching of our tradition.”
Reasonable people can easily understand that the inflammatory remarks of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef represent only himself and his small constituency, definitely not the views of all Jews in all times and all places forever. But when has the “scholar” Robert Spencer ever balanced his one-sided cherry-picking hyperventilating Muslim-bashing blog posts with a fair statement from mainstream moderate Muslims? Oh, right, we forgot all those moderates are just “stealth jihadists” lying in wait until they can overthrow the U.S. Constitution. Silly us.
(Read the whole article at WhatIfTheyWereMuslim.com)