Israel’s political arena has been turned in recent months into a slaughterhouse of democracy’s most sacred cows. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is busy eroding the foundations of the legal system and the media. Education Minister Rabbi Rafi Peretz is engaged in slinging poison arrows into the hearts of gay youths. Yisrael Beitenu Chair Avigdor Liberman is spewing hatred against elected Arab officials, who represent 20% of the country’s citizens. The most recent addition to this frenzied political slaughter, kosher, of course, is an official religious cleric.

In a recently exposed rant, Yitzhak Yosef, Israel’s chief Sephardic rabbi, purported to be the embodiment of apolitical brotherhood and peace, turned an entire community of Israeli citizens into enemies of the Jewish people. “They were brought here to provide a counter-weight to the ultra-Orthodox,” the senior rabbi said of immigrants from the former Soviet Union. “Then they vote for parties that incite against the ultra-Orthodox and religion.” Some, heaven help us, even attend church every Sunday, complained the leading religious authority.

Yosef, a civil servant whose salary is paid by Israeli taxpayers, has expressed similar and worse drivel in the past, as have other rabbis, but the timing made front-page headlines on Jan. 7 and forced politicians and pundits to respond.

The insult hurled by the rabbi at a sizeable constituency — hundreds of thousands of people who were deemed eligible for immigration to Israel under the Law of Return but whom the Orthodox establishment does not recognize as Jews — elicited a half-hearted condemnation by Netanyahu. After all, the Likud party’s candidate for prime minister cannot afford to alienate his “natural partners” in the ultra-Orthodox parties at this critical time, less than two months before elections. All he mustered was a generalized statement that didn't even identify the culprit. “This is an outrageous statement,” Netanyahu tweeted. “The immigration of people from the former Soviet Union is a blessing to the State of Israel and the Jewish people.” A fitting addition to the last sentence would go something like “unlike our brothers, graduates of ultra-Orthodox yeshivas, who evade the draft and contribute nothing to the national economy or the honor of the Jewish people.”