infuriatingThe initial reports over the weekend claimed that former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef called for a genocide against all Palestinian Arabs, wishing the plague on Mahmoud Abbas and all other Palestinians.
The New York Times said
he described the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, as “evil” and called on God to strike “these Ishmaelites and Palestinians with a plague; these evil haters of Israel.”
YNet originally reported and translated the sermon this way:
Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef Saturday night wished death on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his people, who he called "evil enemies of Israel."
During his weekly lesson, held at the synagogue near his house in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Har-Nof, the rabbi mentioned the blessing said at the Rosh Hashana feast that says, "May our enemies and adversaries be destroyed", and applied it to the current situation. "Abu Mazen (Abbas) and all those evil men – may they perish from this world. May God Almighty strike them and these Palestinians."
Today, however, YNet has changed the translation - after the entire world has already been convinced that Rabbi Yosef is a genocidal maniac.
Today's story says:
Ovadia, who heads the Shas religious party in Israel's ruling coalition, expressed hope in his weekly sermon Saturday that "all the evil people who hate Israel, like Abu Mazen (Abbas), perish from our world."This is much different from what was originally reported. This is not a call for genocide; it is a call for God to strike down Israel's enemies - a much different story and very much in line with daily prayers.
"May God strike them down with the plague along with all the evil Palestinians who persecute Israel," he said.
Is this another case of an overzealous media mistranslating (or, in the case of Israel's anti-religious media, misreporting) the words of the religious?
I cannot find the text of the sermon online, so I can't say for sure, but it sure looks like the media again placed their own preconceived notions of Jewish "extremism" ahead of an accurate story.
What exactly did Ovadia Yosef say?
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Ovadia Yosef
this news piece is already a week old, has been proven to be a lie and is the worst kind of slander in that it takes a man's words out of context. but those that enable Islam are pushing this narrative... and we shouldn't be shocked because Palestine is exactly the same kind of fiction:
