Bereaved Father Rebukes Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef Over Trump, Draft Row

Bereaved father Hagai Lober issued a sharp public response on Sunday to remarks by Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, who said in his weekly lesson that Donald Trump’s changed attitude toward Israel stems from the arrest of ultra-Orthodox draft evaders. Lober asked in his post, “Where is common sense, is this Torah?”

Writing under the headline “Why did Trump turn against us?”, Lober used heavy sarcasm to argue that, by this logic, “there is no doubt, not even the slightest, that the secular people, or the religious Zionists, or the soldiers and police officers” are to blame. He then criticized those, in his words, who have not borne the burden of the war for the past two and a half years, accusing them of ignoring appeals for help, living as if nothing happened, taking “between the festivals” vacations and trips, and praising draft dodgers while “others are burying sons.”

Lober continued that, according to this mindset, God would be “ignoring the tears of war orphans and widows, and the tired eyes of reserve soldiers and their wives who carry the home alone,” and would punish the nation only because of them. He concluded by asking the ultra-Orthodox public directly, “Where are you? ... Say you, is this Torah?”

Yosef’s comments came in his weekly lecture on the draft of yeshiva students and Israel-U.S. relations. He said that since Ben-Gurion’s time, “may the names of the wicked rot,” yeshiva students had been exempted from military service, added that “the Torah protects us,” and claimed Trump “turned against us” בגלל the persecution of yeshiva students by “that evil Jezebel,” whom he said was giving the orders, referring to the attorney general.