‘May God finish her’: Shas spiritual leader bashes AG over order to delay memorial event for party founder

Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef lambastes Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara as “evil” and “crazy” over her recent order to delay until after the October 27 Knesset election a state-funded memorial event marking the death of his father, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, over electioneering concerns.

Both the late Ovadia Yosef and Yitzhak Yosef have served as the spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party — Ovadia having founded the party — and both served as chief Sephardi rabbi of Israel.

The Shas-controlled Religious Affairs Ministry had proposed to hold the gender-segregated event a week earlier, but was shot down by Baharav-Miara, according to the Haaretz daily, which noted the ministry and Jerusalem Municipality staged the memorial at a cost of NIS 4 million ($1.3 million) in the past two years.

In a weekly sermon this evening, Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef says: “Suddenly, a legal opinion is issued — by that evil person, the attorney general, what’s her name? Miara, that crazy Miara — that it is forbidden to hold an assembly in honor of [Rabbi Ovadia Yosef].”

“They shouldn’t listen to her. Who is she at all? May God finish her, give her a blow… This won’t pass in silence,” he adds, disregarding the fact that Baharav-Miara did not order the cancellation of the event.

He repeats an argument also made by Shas officials that a memorial rally for former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin hasn’t been canceled, even though the event at Rabin Square isn’t set to be held until November and isn’t funded by the state.