Israel Today

Members‘Do Not Rejoice in Your Enemy’s Demise’

In a rare expression of interfaith dialogue, President Reuven Rivlin hosted a meeting of Israeli Jewish religious leaders and senior Muslim clerics from the Palestinian Authority.

Yossi Aloni

Jan 5, 2017 at 2:46 pm

The theme was to speak out against religiously-inspired hatred and violence.

Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef gave the keynote speech, calling for an end to the mass murder in Syria. “In the face of genocide it is forbidden for us to remain silent. We must not repeat what happened in the Holocaust, when they murdered millions of Jews and the world was silent,” he said.

“We teach that even when Israel’s enemies are defeated in war, it is our duty to prevent [genocide] and certainly not to rejoice, for all men were created in the image of God,” the rabbi continued. “Not far away, even as we sit here, people—including women and children—are being murdered…especially in the city of Aleppo.

“Millions of refugees are homeless, hundreds of thousands are starving under siege. They may not be our friends, but they are human beings going through a...

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