The Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel Yitzhak Yosef has said that immigrant Jews who moved to Israel during the fall of the Soviet Union were “religion-hating gentiles”.

In video obtained by Ynet, Yosef was heard denouncing “communist, religion-hating gentiles.

“Tens or hundreds of thousands of gentiles came to the country because of the law determining who's Jewish,” he said, referring to the Israeli Law of Return, which grants the right to citizenship to any Jew.

“There are many, many gentiles here, some are communists, hostile to religion, haters of religion. They’re not even Jewish, they’re gentiles.”

Leading Israeli figures have condemned the comments.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted that it was “an outrageous statement.”

He said: “Immigration from the former CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] is a huge boon to Israel and the Jewish people.”

Avigdor Lieberman, a Soviet-born Israeli and leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, called for the Chief Rabbi to be prosecuted for incitement, adding: “This is not the Chief Rabbi of Israel — it’s the Chief Inciter of Israel”.

On Tuesday, the Chief Rabbi refused to apologise for the remarks, declaring: “I said it clearly and I’ll say it again.”

He added: “Along with the blessed immigration of Jews from the former USSR, who gave their lives for the protection of Judaism – there is a minority of immigrants who are not Jewish according to halachah, who migrated here on the back of the ‘grandson clause’ in the Law of Return.”