The elections were a “miracle” and the result of Divine intervention, Tzfat (Safed) city rabbi, Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, stated Sunday. 

“God had a positive effect in this election, it is a miracle and we have to thank Him for everything that happened,” Rabbi Eliyahu stated in a special Arutz Sheva interview. “It was the rescue of the settlement movement (i.e. Jews in Judea and Samaria – ed.), the Torah world, and the Jewish nature of the state.”

“We may be under the control of people who degrade mezuzah and everything holy,” he continued, referring to the inflammatory comments by leftist activist Yair Garbuz during a pro-Labor rally earlier this month, “and now we’re under these MKs – even if not all observant – who appreciate Torah, God, and the settlements.” 

“Thank God for doing this and purifying our hearts,” he added. 

Rabbi Eliyahu did not spare words over those who lost. 

“There has been a great miracle against all the poison against [Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu and the Likud, as the waves of hatred that flooded the Israeli street prosecuted us through foreign money,” he noted, referring to the V15 anti-Netanyahu campaign funded by the US. “But in the end foreign money fights against the holy, and God.”

“Our sages said, ‘Do not celebrate the fall of your enemies,’ – enemies if they are from within Israel and not from other nations,” he added. “So are not happy that our brothers have fallen, we are only sorry that they were swayed by foreign funding.” 

Rabbi Eliyahu also brushed off concerns over the loss for Jewish Home, the flagship Religious Zionist party, which lost several seats in the 20th Knesset. 

“The train moves forward now, and that’s the most important thing,” he said. “True, we maybe took a step back, but we’re in a train which goes forward – because otherwise we could have seen a second Disengagement, a large chilul Hashem (desecration of God’s name – ed.) which we would have needed rescue from.”