Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yizhak Yosef on Saturday blasted legislation that would make it easier for Israeli military courts to sentence convicted murderers in terrorist attacks to death.
"There is no room for this, we are not the Sanhedrin," Yosef said during his weekly Torah lesson, referring to the ancient Jewish court system with the sole religious authority to sentence convicts to death.
"If there is an incident of a Jewish terrorist, to kill him would be against Halachah," or Jewish religious law, he said.
The government approved the bill in a preliminary reading last Wednesday, after a tense debate, with 52 coalition MKs voting in favor and 49 against.
The bill, which is actually an amendment to the penal code, will only become law pending three more Knesset readings.
Currently, a death penalty can only be enacted if a panel of three military judges passes a sentence unanimously. If the amendment is adopted, a majority verdict would suffice.
Yosef's opposition, however, likely spells the end of Shas' support for the bill, as he is the spiritual leader of the Sephardi ultra-Orthodox party. The coalition currently comprises 66 MKs, seven of whom are from Shas.
Assuming the Shas MKs fall in line with Yosef's stance and vote against the legislation, it will not have the support of the necessary majority in future readings, even if the rest of the coalition votes in favor of the bill.
Yosef, the son of the late former Chief Sephardi Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, explained in his lesson that "only a Sanhedrin discusses killing a person. If there will be the death penalty, they [the judges] will also need to rule on the Jew who committed the arson in Duma. Heaven forbid there will be the death penalty."
Duma, a village near Hebron, is the site of a heinous arson attack by Jewish extremists that killed a Palestinian couple and their toddler son. Another son, 4 years old at the time of the attack, sustained severe burns but survived.
Yosef pointed out that even "security people say that there is not much room for this. This is not related to Left and Right. Great sages, the real ones, always opposed the death penalty."
"Do you want to sentence him to be put to death?" Yosef asked, referring to Amiram Ben-Uliel, who was indicted for the Duma murders. "It is only in the hands of Heaven. Let him come down with a terrible disease or have a traffic accident. This is in divine hands. We are not the Sanhedrin."
During the heated discussion that preceded Wednesday's Knesset vote on the bill, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who supports the legislation, remarked that "whoever slaughters and laughs will not live out the rest of his life between prison walls but will be executed instead."
"There are extreme circumstances in which people who commit terrible crimes don't deserve to live, and therefore we must change the law. There are considerations of justice in extreme circumstances," the prime minister said.
During the debate, MK Ahmed Tibi (Joint Arab List) asked Netanyahu if he would be in favor of the death penalty also in the extreme case of Jewish terrorists in Duma, to which Netanyahu replied, "In principle, yes."
