Shas spiritual leader recorded calling Netanyahu a ‘liar’ and a ‘blind fox’

After the Shas party withdrew from the government — though not from the coalition — a key spiritual leader of the Haredi party is recorded lambasting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Likud MK Yuli Edelstein, the head of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

According to Channel 13, Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, until recently the Sephardi chief rabbi of Israel, made the comments to young Haredi men at his synagogue, blasting the politicians over their failure to reach agreements with the ultra-Orthodox parties regarding a law to exempt Haredi yeshiva students from military service.

“The prime minister told me one can get recruited to the army while Haredi and end the service while Haredi,” Yosef said. “Why are you a liar? Such audacity to lie like that.”

Yosef refers to a famous quote by his late father, Shas founder and prominent ultra-Orthodox spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who once called Netanyahu a “blind goat.”

“And I say [he’s] a blind fox and not a blind goat,” he continues, alleging that no ultra-Orthodox person can go through army service without “going astray.”

Yosef then turns to Edelstein, a Soviet-born Jew and former refusenik who served in labor camps and was eventually allowed to immigrate to Israel. The rabbi seizes on the fact that Edelstein’s father ended up converting to Christianity and becoming a priest.

“There is one, whose father converted to Christianity and is a priest — this one grew up in a priest’s home and he’s doing all the trouble to the yeshiva students,” he says. “He’s with a kippa, and he’s doing all the trouble. Your father is a priest! You will come and harm the Torah students?”