“Whoever presides over a court of gentiles, and judges using the laws of gentiles, gives up the Torah of Moses, and is called wicked,” said Rabbi Yosef on Saturday night. “They judge according to the laws of the nations, not the Torah. They accept testimony from women. This is against the Torah.”
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of the Sefardic Shas Ppolitical party and the leading Sefardi rabbi in the world today,called Israel's court system a “court of gentiles,” in his weekly public address given last night in Jerusalem. Ha'aretz summarizes what Rabbi Yosef went on to say after establishing the 'non-Jewish' status of Israel's courts and judges::
…[Rabbi Yosef] went as far as labeling judges “wicked,” “incompetent witnesses,” and stating that they should not be allowed to lead synagogue prayers.…
Why the sudden hatred for Israel's courts and judges?
The High Court of Justice, which ruled that the law that had allowed haredim to evade the military draft is unconstitutional.
Someone pointed out to Yosef that some of the judges on that court who issued that ruling are Orthodox Jews.
“Whoever presides over a court of gentiles, and judges using the laws of gentiles, gives up the Torah of Moses, and is called wicked,” said Rabbi Yosef on Saturday night. “They judge according to the laws of the nations, not the Torah. They accept testimony from women. This is against the Torah,” continued Rabbi Yosef.
Rabbi Yosef related an incident presented to him, in which a couple married with an Israel court judge as a witness. Rabbi Yosef ordered them “to marry again, with a different ketubah. That ketubah is invalid. Why? He [the witness] is wicked, and incompetent to testify. It must be known.”
“They hate the torah, so they are incompetent as witnesses. There is no doubt. Any judge that presides over a secular court is invalid as a witness. They must not be used to witness matrimony, to sign the ketubah. It is forbidden,” said Rabbi Yossef. He went on to call such a marriage invalid, likening it to living in sin with a prostitute.…