Bayit Yehudi slams Sephardic chief rabbi for 'blaming Jews for blood spilt' on Temple Mount ( Al Aqsa Mosque)

The pro-settler Bayit Yehudi party publicly chastised the Sephardic chief rabbi on Friday for suggesting that Jews’ insistence on praying in Temple Mount has contributed to the violence currently engulfing Jerusalem.

Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, the party chairman, posted on his Facebook page a response to Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef’s remark that “Jewish blood was spilt because they went up to Temple Mount.”

“That is incorrect,” Bennett wrote. “Honorable Chief Rabbi, Jewish blood was spilled because Arabs murdered them.”

Bennett’s party colleague, MK Orit Struck, called the rabbi’s remarks “unfortunate.”

“I protest the blaming of Jews for the incitement and murder committed by Arab terrorists,” Struck said.

The chief rabbi also had harsh words for religious Zionist clerics who have been encouraging Jews to agitate for rights of worship in the holy complex. Yosef called them “fourth-rate rabbis,” drawing the ire of Struck.

“I object to the insults and harm done to the great rabbis of religious Zionism whose rulings and edicts are what guide those Jews who go up to Temple Mount,” Struck said. “From time immemorial, the religious-nationalist community has heeded their words and acted upon them.”

“I, myself, do not ascend to Temple Mount on account of the edict handed down by Rabbi Dov Lior regarding the ban on women from the site,” she said.

Yosef spoke at the funeral of Shalom Aharon Baadani, the teen who died Friday after sustaining critical wounds in a terror attack at the Jerusalem light rail. Yosef centered his talk on the wave of violence that has swept through the capital.

He lashed out at Jews who go up to the Temple Mount, suggesting they played a role in the recent surge in violence, which has raised concerns of a possible third Palestinian intifada, or uprising. "We must stop this," he said, directing his comments at Jewish worshipers who insist on praying at the contested site, despite the controversies it stirs. "Only then will the bloodshed end."

The prominent rabbi went so far as to liken Jewish prayer atop the mountaintop that is holy to both Muslims and Jews, to a sever crime "punishable by death."