Racist statements exposed • Baruch Gezhai informed Deri: He will not enter the Knesset

June 16, 2020   

Rabbi Baruch Gezhai informed Shas Chairman Minister Aryeh Deri this evening (Tuesday) that he had decided to resign from the Shas list. Rabbi Gezhai, who is in 11th place on the Shas list, was supposed to enter the Knesset under Norwegian law, but following a series of his statements that caused a media storm, he announced that he was giving up on entering the Knesset. In a sermon from 2016 that was recorded and posted online, he explains that "a woman should be modest," and that anyone who does not act this way "is usually written in the books of the Kabbalists - they send her back in the reincarnation of a cow." In the sermon, he also explained why women suffer from cancer, and why pregnant women abort their children. His remarks, which included harsh and controversial statements about women, predictably sparked claims that he is supposedly "against women." However, after Shas initially claimed that the things Gezaei said were taken out of context and that this was a one-time issue, a search of his YouTube page indicated exactly the opposite. This evening, more racist statements against Arabs and Bedouins were published on Channel 12. For example, he was recorded saying: "There is no beautiful Arab, have you ever seen a beautiful Arab? There is no such thing. He will put on perfume, what he will not put on - the smell of a campfire." Apparently, following these publications, he gave up.