Jerusalem – Remarks calling for “revenge” against seculars made in 2005 by Sephardi Chief Rabbi nominee, Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, have been removed from the news agency website on which they originally appeared after the comments began circulating on social media websites.
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HAARETZ (http://bit.ly/14XnvKF) reports that Eliyahu’s comments, first appearing on the Kipa website in 2005 as part of an “Ask the Rabbi” feature, quote Eliyhau as answering in response to a question from a reader about the disengagement of the Gaza Strip that “revenge” needs to be taken against “seculars” for the “disaster” they brought upon “us.”
Eliyhau’s comments were removed without explanation by Kipa after they began circulating on Facebook and Twitter earlier this week.
A spokesman for Eliyahu said that his 2005 comments have been taken “out of context.”
The Israeli Attorney General announced earlier this week that if Eliyahu officially announces his candidacy for chief rabbi that he will be summoned for a hearing to explain his history of incendiary and racist remarks.
Our own “Islamists” – I can only imagine the sacrifices freedom would suffer in the name of religion if people like this ran the Israeli…or any other…national government. We cherish and appreciate our own freedoms here in the United States, where a government employee has a secular governmental right to his or her Shabbos…but too many of our extremists would deny comparable rights to others…of course, because we are right and they are evil and wrong, and they have no comparable rights. Our “Islamists.”
We have lost our way and need new leadership. Our yeshivos are raising sheep who have forgotten how to think, who are actually trained NOT to think.
Torah does not seek “revenge”. The only way you can repair the universe is to restore Harmony by exacting harmony. This is another ignorant inception of fervor from a wayward leaning foolish unorthodox view which seeks blood rather than atonement.