LONDON -- Those of us whose job is to feed the world a steady diet of "news" (99 percent of which is actually recycled "olds") are always grateful when a loon like Rabbi Ovadia Yosef opens his mouth and lets fly. Especially in August.
Yosef is former chief rabbi of Israel and spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, third largest in the Israeli Knesset, or Parliament. In his Saturday sermon Aug. 5, broadcast around the world by satellite, he informed us that Prime Minister Ehud Barak was crazy to try to make peace with the Arabs -- and that Hitler had only been doing God's work.
"Where are (Barak's) brains?" inquired the rabbi. "How can you make peace with a snake? The sons of Ishmael (Arabs) are all accursed haters of Israel. God regrets having created these Ishmaelites." His followers applauded, of course, and various other people went tut-tut. Routine slander, not many hurt.