Jewish Ultra-Orthodox Leader Says Citizens Will Leave Israel If Forced To Military

JERUSALEM - Israel's Sephardic Rabi chief Yitzhak Yosef revealed that ultra-Orthodox Jewish followers would leave the country if they were forced into the military.

"If they force us to join the military, we will all fly overseas, buy tickets, and leave," Channel 12 said on Sunday evening, March 10, citing the words of the Sephardic's Jewish head."

"They have to understand this, all secular people, they don't understand it," the head of the Rabi said, warning that it was endangering the country as it was taken from Anodalu.

"They (the secular Israelis) must understand that without their mouths, without collelels and yeshivas (the Jewish college for Talmud research), the [Israeli] military would not be successful," he said.

Earlier, the head of the Rabi criticized the Israeli military for the behavior of its troops in a mosque in Jenin on December 14 last year. Israel's right-wing National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir then shared a video of soldiers performing Jewish rituals inside a mosque in Jenin.

The video shows an Israeli soldier reading the prayer of Shema Yisrael through a mosque loudspeaker. Another soldier was heard saying soldiers were inside a mosque in Jenin. Ultra-Orthodox Jews reject Israel's secular education system, and prefer to send their children to religious schools (yeshivas).

Under current Israeli law, Jews educated in Yeshivas have been released from military service. Israel has launched a deadly military offensive in the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack on October 7 led by Hamas that killed about 1,200 people.

About 31,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, died in Gaza, and more than 72,500 others were injured in mass destruction and shortages of basic necessities.