Liberman’s party demands criminal probe into chief rabbi for alleged incitement

Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu party sends a letter to Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, asking him to open a criminal investigation into the Sephardic chief rabbi, Yitzhak Yosef, over “suspected incitement to racism.”

After Yosef’s remarks calling immigrants from the former Soviet Union “religion-hating gentiles” were exposed, the party — whose voters base consists largely of immigrants from the former Soviet Union and which has repeatedly clashed recently with the ultra-Orthodox — says in the letter that the remarks are “very severe.”

“There is great doubt whether he is fit to continue serving in this public position,” the letter says. “In the current circumstances we have no choice but to demand that you use your authority to bring the chief rabbi to justice.”