Sephardi chief rabbi urges action to end Syrian ‘Holocaust’

Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef said the world must not remain silent in the face of the atrocities taking place in Syria, where a ‘small Holocaust’ is taking place.

Syria has been consumed by civil war since 2011.

Israel’s Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, head of the Supreme Rabbinical Court, during an inter-religious meeting with Palestinian Muslim clerics, urged for action in the face of the immense suffering and genocide taking place in Syria over the past several years, with no end in sight.

President Reuven Rivlin hosted the event, which took place in Jerusalem on Thursday.

“A we sit here…men, women and children in nearby Syria are being murdered with chemical weapons, biological weapons and air bombs,” Yosef said. “Millions of refugees are without a roof over their heads, hundreds of thousands of others are starving under siege. They may not be our friends, but they are human beings suffering a small holocaust.”

“As Jews we must not stay silent,” the spiritual leader added, referring to the lack of global response to the Holocaust and the murder of six million Jews, when “the world looked on and remained silent.”

“The call must be heard from here: A genocide will not be allowed to go by quietly — not in Syria and not anywhere else, and not against any people,” he declared.

Yesh Aid party leader Yair Lapid, who is strongly unpopular with the ultra-Orthodox community over his fight for compulsory IDF service and basic secular education in government-funded schools, nevertheless praised the rabbi’s comments.

“Though I have my disagreements with the Rishon Letzion (a nickname for rabbi), the things he said about Syria today are the words of a true spiritual leader,” Lapid tweeted.

By: World Israel News Staff
(With files from YNET)