Rabbi Meir Mazuz, head of the Kisei Rahamim Yeshiva, on Sunday night clarified his previous statement comparing Foreign Minister Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid) and Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beytenu) to "Nazis."
"They did not understand me correctly," Rabbi Mazuz was quoted by Kikar Hashabbat as saying. "We must respect every person - [we can] hate the action, but not the person."
"On Saturday night, I said something that shocked the entire country, for no reason. They did not understand me. They took things out of context.
"They act to us like Nazis? They do not act like Nazis. On the contrary."
In a weekly lecture to yeshiva students, Rabbi Mazuz said: “We have many bad people. We're waiting for the day this government will pass from this world."
"Whoever wants to join Liberman, Lapid ... the 'alternate' prime minister. This is a replacement (haluf). In Arabic haluf means a pig."
He accused Lapid and Liberman of "attempting to choke the yeshiva students while giving as much as possible to the Arabs."
“They are traitors to their people, they hate their people. They’re worse than the Nazis — at least the Nazis loved their own people; but these hate their people,” he said.
"They want to destroy children, the elderly, the Torah scholars...when it is through the merit of the Torah that we have survived for the last 2,000 years."