The spiritual leader of Israel's ultra-Orthodox Shas party, renowned for his racist denunciations of Arabs, said Friday that they were reproducing like insects and were destined to end up in hell.
"In the old city of Jerusalem they're swarming like ants. They should go to hell -- and the Messiah will speed them on their way," rabbi Ovadia Yosef said in a weekly sermon broadcast on army radio and cited by AFP.
in April, Yosef said in a sermon ahead of the weekend Passover holiday that God must annihilate the Arabs and rain missiles down on them.
In the course of a discussion of the historical enemies of the Jews, and pleas to God to defeat them, Rabbi Yosef said of Israel's Arab foes that "it is forbidden to be merciful to them, you must give them missiles, with relish - annihilate them. Evil ones, damnable ones."
But a spokesman of Yosef said at that time that the rabbi meant only “terrorist Arabs.” Yosef himself retracted the statements days later.
"Only a dummy could conceive that the rabbi intended harm to innocents or attacking them with missiles," said the spokesman – Albawaba.com
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