'May God finish her': Shas spiritual leader assails AG over electioneering ban

Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef calls Gali Baharav-Miara ‘evil’ and ‘crazy’ over her order to postpone state-funded memorial service for his father Rabbi Ovadia Yosef until after election

Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef on Saturday night assailed Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, calling on God to “finish her” over her recent order to delay until after the coming Knesset election a state-funded memorial event marking the death of his father, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, over electioneering concerns.

In a weekly sermon on Saturday night, Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef said: “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].”

He was disregarding the fact that Baharav-Miara did not order the cancellation of the event.

“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 added.

He repeated 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.

מרן הראשון לציון הגאון רבי יצחק יוסף נגד היועצת המשפטית: "המרשעת – המשוגעת – הזו מתעסקת עם מרן? הקב״ה יכלה אותה, זה לא יעבור בשתיקה, ה' יעזור שהיא תקבל את המכה שלה!״ pic.twitter.com/TMephE0sbx

— ישי כהן (@ishaycoen) August 29, 2026

Both the late Ovadia Yosef and his son, 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.

Baharav-Miara ordered that a state-funded memorial event be delayed until after the October 27 over electioneering concerns lest the event include prohibited election campaigning.

Last year, the Knesset passed a law to annually commemorate Ovadia Yosef’s death by “holding educational and value-based activities and ceremonies in state institutions,” as well as other activities “to be decided by the education minister, granting research scholarships and granting support payments to public institutions working to fulfill the purposes of the bill.”

Yosef’s death, marked according to Jewish custom on the Hebrew date of his passing, this year falls on October 14, two weeks before the Knesset election.

No new date has reportedly yet been set for the memorial event.

The Shas-controlled Religious Affairs Ministry had proposed holding the gender-segregated event a week early 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.

MK Avichai Boaron of the ruling Likud party backed Yosef’s outburst, telling the Kan public broadcaster that “there is a community in Israel that feels that [Yitzhak Yosef] is being trounced by her decisions.”

He added, “She doesn’t understand that she is offending the feelings of hundreds of thousands of people in Israel.”

Opposition Democrats party leader Yair Golan posted to X that Yosef’s remarks are “a disgrace, and further proof that Shas must not be returned to the government. Anyone who wishes that God harm the attorney general because she is enforcing the law cannot be a partner in a democratic government.”

Yosef has garnered a reputation for controversial remarks on matters of religion and state.

In June, Yosef said an emerging US-Iran peace deal at the time – which many Israelis saw as a betrayal by US President Donald Trump — was a divine punishment for Baharav-Miara’s efforts to crack down on Haredi draft evaders.

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, center, attends a meeting of the Knesset House Committee at the parliament in Jerusalem on June 9, 2026. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

In October 2025, he was heard in a recording calling a fellow rabbi and bereaved father of a slain soldier a “heretic” for supporting measures to enlist yeshiva students.

And in May of that year, he warned that if the government were to begin arresting yeshiva students for evading draft orders, then the ultra-Orthodox community would be forced to leave Israel.

The government has clashed with Baharav-Miara since its first weeks in office and has repeatedly vilified her, largely over her opposition to efforts to weaken judicial oversight and limit other checks on executive power.

The coalition voted to dismiss her last year, but the decision was frozen by the High Court. The coalition is now advancing a pair of controversial bills that would curtail the power of the attorney general and make it harder to indict high-ranking government officials.