From the Liveblog of
Sunday, June 21, 2026
Shas spiritual leader claims Trump turning against Israel is divine punishment for ‘garbage’ AG’s decisions
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleSam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
Former Sephardic chief rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, who is also the spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, links Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara to the US-Iran ceasefire, blaming it on her backing of enforcement measures against ultra-Orthodox draft evaders.
“Yeshiva students since the time of [David] Ben-Gurion, may the name of the wicked rot, have been exempted and engaged in Torah. The Torah protects us. Why did [US President Donald Trump] turn against us for no reason? Because of the decrees they make against the students of Torah, that is why [he] turned against us,” Yosef says during his weekly Saturday evening lecture.
“Stop the arrests. This woman, this wicked woman, is garbage,” he adds.
Yosef has previously warned that if the government begins arresting yeshiva students for dodging the draft, then the ultra-Orthodox community will be forced to leave Israel.
“If they force us to go to the army, the yeshiva students, if they come to yeshivas and arrest students, [then] we have no right to exist here [and] we will all go abroad, we will not stay here,” Yosef said in a speech published by the ultra-Orthodox Kikar Hashabbat news site in May 2025.
The Times of Israel Community.