Shas Rabbi Slams Attorney General Over Draft Fight, Calls It a War on Torah

Rabbi Shlomo Mahfud, a member of Shas's Council of Torah Sages, launched a harsh attack Thursday morning on Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara over the ongoing dispute about military conscription. In an interview on Kol Chai radio, he called her policies harsher than Pharaoh and Haman and accused the state campaign on the draft issue of targeting religion and Torah itself.

Mahfud said the current situation reminded him of the early years of the state, especially 1949 and 1950 and the era of the Red Book, when, he claimed, parents were denied work so they could not raise children as they wished. He argued that the establishment effort was meant to change the character of the Jewish people.

The rabbi also described personal memories from his time as a new immigrant in Kibbutz Beit HaShita. He said there was a systematic