The outgoing Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, spoke during his class at a synagogue in Jerusalem about his response to a rabbi who wrote a halachic treatise against a deal to release the hostages held in Gaza.
Rabbi Yosef began by speaking about the atrocities committed by the Hamas terrorist organization. "We would have seen all these things, what terrible cruelty, how barbaric these Hamas people are, we saw how they kill, such terrible things. I didn't just say that we should release as many as possible in order to get the hostages out."
He described how the other rabbi came over to him and told him about the opinion he had written opposing a hostage deal. Rabbi Yosef said that he asked the rabbi if he had a son of 17-18 years of age. "If he was kidnapped in Gaza, would you also write like that? Think like it's your son or your daughter, God forbid."
"I was exposed to all these things, I saw with my own eyes what was happening there, all the horrors there, that's why we said this is a matter of immediate life and death," said Rabbi Yosef.
In July, Rabbi Yosef spoke in favor of an immediate deal to free the remaining hostages, saying, "They should finish the deal already. There's nothing else to do - release terrorists with blood on their hands, it hurts the heart, we released [Hamas leader] Yahya Sinwar and we saw what happened, but this is a matter of immediate life and death."
"If you don't release them, they will kill the hostages, this is a time-sensitive matter of life and death. It could be that these [terrorists] will later go out and kill, that's not immediate, the hostages are immediate," he said.