JERUSALEM (JTA) — Non-Jews should not live in the Land of Israel unless they accept the seven Noahide Laws, Israel’s Sephardic chief rabbi said.
Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef made the statement during his weekly Saturday night lecture, Israel’s Channel 10 first reported. Channel 10 obtained a copy of a recording of the lecture, which it posted on its website.
“According to Jewish law, gentiles should not live in the Land of Israel,” Yosef said. “If a gentile does not agree to take on the seven Noahide Laws, we should send him to Saudi Arabia. When the true and complete redemption arrives, that is what we will do.”
The laws include prohibitions against idolatry, blaspheming God, murder, forbidden sexual relations, stealing and eating the limb off a live animal, and prescribe the establishment of a legal system.
Non-Jews who remain in Israel are here to serve the Jews who live in Israel, according to the rabbi.
“Who will be the servers? Who will be our assistants? Therefore, we leave them here in the land,” he said.
The only reason the non-Jews continue to remain in Israel is that the Messiah has not yet come, Yosef said.
“If our hand were firm, if we had the power to rule, that’s what we should do. But the thing is, our hand is not firm, and we are waiting for the Messiah,” he said.
Earlier this month Yosef, the son of the late chief rabbi of Israel Ovadia Yosef, raised hackles when he asserted during his weekly lecture that it is a mitzvah to kill a terrorist. He also asserted in the same March 12 lecture that the threat of being killed by an attacker’s would-be victim will deter such attacks.
“When a terrorist knows if he comes with a knife he won’t return alive, it deters them, so therefore it’s a mitzvah to kill him,” he said.
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