Ultra-Orthodox Israeli chief rabbi says Jews will leave country if forced to join army

JERUSALEM

Israel's Chief Sephardic Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef has threatened that ultra-Orthodox Jews will leave the country if they are forced to serve in the army, local media reported.

“If they force us to join the army, we would all fly out of the country, buy tickets, and go,” Channel 12 reported on Saturday evening, quoting the chief rabbi of Sephardic Jews as saying.

“They have to understand this, all those secularists, they don't get it,” the chief rabbi said, warning that “it puts the state at stake.”

“They (secular Israelis) have to understand that without the Torah, without kollels and yeshivas (Jewish colleges for Talmudic studies), the army would not be successful,” he added.

The chief rabbi had earlier criticized the Israeli army for its soldiers’ behavior inside a mosque in Jenin on Dec. 14, last year.

Israel's far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir then shared a video of soldiers performing Jewish rituals inside a mosque in Jenin.

It showed an Israeli soldier reciting the Shema Yisrael prayer on the mosque’s loudspeaker. Another soldier was heard saying soldiers were inside a mosque in Jenin.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews reject Israel’s secular education system, preferring to send their children to religious schools (yeshivas).

Under current Israeli law, Jews educated at yeshivas are exempted from military service.

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on the Gaza Strip since an Oct. 7 cross-border attack led by Hamas in which some 1,200 people were killed.

Nearly 31,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have since been killed in Gaza, and over 72,500 others injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.

The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid a crippling blockade of most food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

* Writing by Ikram Kouachi