Ovadia Yosef said racist things, so did Ghandi!

The mobs were quick to attack Rav Ovadia Yosef for being a racist, but I wasn’t so sure that this would put a dent on his larger than life personality and decades of good tidings. You see, I’m of the opinion that one can harbor some pretty haywire personal views, while still doing a tremendous amount of good. Ovadia Yosef really wasn’t that racist. All I could find were 4 very recent quotes that all the naysayers liked to point out. Great, Ovadia Yosef basically said what every other Orthodox Rabbi has ever said, but he was that much more public about.

Here are some of things he said, none of them are shocking in the least bit:

Goyim (gentiles, non-Jews) were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel. Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat. That is why gentiles were created.

I thought the nation of Cham (black people) were supposed to serve us, I never knew it was all the goyim. Are goyim a race? Is that all he said about them, because everyone I know says that the goyim in this country will turn on us when the Nazis take over.

It is forbidden to be merciful to them. You must send missiles to them and annihilate them. They are evil and damnable.

In this sentence one would assume that he’s talking about the Arabs, or maybe they got one of the Arabs on a soundbite talking about the Jews. I think the feeling is mostly mutual. Nothing groundbreaking or extreme here, it’s Israel for God sake, if you live in Israel, it’s assumed that you are an occupier anyway.

Completely evil.

I’m so shocked, in the grand scheme of religious fanaticism that’s a pretty liberal view.

So there you have it, Ovadia Yosef is anti-Arab, anti-woman, anti-gay, and anti-goy. I guess I’m not getting it, but I assume that he must have done a great deal more than most folks, or his racist legacy would be encroaching on him already. Isn’t he brown anyway? Doesn’t that give him a free pass to racist towards his own people (he did grow up in Iraq)

Ghandi was a racist too, but that was buried by his good deeds.

Now if someone is a rapist or a violent criminal, I don’t think any good deeds could make them a good person.

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