Israel: Good Morning Shasland!

By Ami Isseroff

How many aged Moroccan ultra-orthodox rabbis does it take to beat Israel‘s best general?

One - and it isn’t so funny if you live here.

Israel’s latest coalition crisis seems to have ended this past week with the Barak government still in power, but at a huge cost to the principles of democracy. The ultra-orthodox Shas Party provoked a series of crises with the aim of getting more money for their school systems and other concessions that would make them heroes in the eyes of their constituency. They demanded money for their school system, they demanded extra-legal powers for the Shas party Deputy Education Minister to use the money, they demanded legalization of their illegal radio stations.

Education Minister Yossi Sarid and his Meretz party were opposed in particular to further funding of the Shas schools and special powers for their deputy minister. However, PM Ehud Barak made a series of concessions to Shas. Each time PM Barak and the One Israel party caved in to their demands, Shas predictably had new demands. The attack was spearheaded by aged Shas “Spiritual Leader,” Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. He repeatedly characterized Yossi Sarid in terms that would otherwise be described as ranging from libel to incitement to murder. These harangues, when delivered in rabbinical sermons, were excused as just a colorful manner of speaking. Rabbi Yosef called Sarid “Haman,” asked that his memory be erased and strongly hinted that Sarid was deserving of a violent end.

The coalition fight became a contest of wills between Ovadia Yosef and Meretz. PM Ehud Barak repeatedly promised that One Israel would not give in to blackmail and said repeatedly that Meretz was a natural coalition partner. However, after Barak visited Rabbi Yosef and said that he could not see a coalition without Shas, pundits say Shas leaders understood that they could get anything they wanted. Having demonized Sarid as the symbol of secularism, leftism and everything they hate, what they wanted was Sarid’s head on a platter. In the end they got it. Meretz ministers resigned rather than give in to Barak’s request that they allow special powers for Deputy Minister Nahari. The ministers said they resigned rather than stand in the way of implementation of the peace program of the government, and that they would support the government from without. The resignations were tendered on the first day of summer, but the feeling of most was that it was Springtime for Ovadiah Yosef and Shas, and Winter for Israel and democracy.

Barak’s collapse was a bitter blow for the majority of Israelis. Nearly 70%, including right-wing Likud party members, supported the stand of the tiny 10 seat Meretz party, and most could not believe that Barak, ex-Chief-of -Staff of the IDF and former elite commando leader, would knuckle under to Ovadia Yosef and the aged rabbis of the Shas council of Torah scholars with their picturesque long white beards and earlocks. It was widely believed that Shas was bluffing, since polls showed that if new elections were held, they would lose seats in the Knesset. After the deal was announced along with the resignation of Meretz party ministers, a disc jockey proclaimed “Good Morning Shasland.”

The Shas party claim to represent traditional Moroccan Jews who believe they were slighted by the secular, European establishment. Actually, a main legitimate motivation for founding the part was to seek funding for the school system, and particularly for education of female Moroccan students, who were discriminated against in the ultra-orthodox school system that was run by European Hassidic Jews.

In the matter of religious coercion, Shas has veered between favoring “explaining to people gently” and an uncompromising ultra-reactionary attitude. “He who desecrates the Sabbath is to be killed,” proclaimed Ovadia Yosef at one point, quoting the Bible. Shas advertisements during former elections claimed that “an old Sephardic Jewish women who kisses a Torah scroll in sadness and longing is worth more than forty university professors who tell us that we are descended from monkeys.”

Not surprisingly, most Israelis view the Shas party as a demagogic movement intended to blackmail them into funding religious projects that include non-existent schools. The sentiments of those who view the Shas party as champions of the proletarian underdog are probably misplaced. They are much closer to American populist demagogues William Jennings Bryan and Huey Long than to Karl Marx.

Each election, Shas power has grown steadily, surprising pollsters again and again. They have proven exceptionally adept at wrangling patronage by leveraging coalition votes in governments of the right and left, and equally adept at using their increased resources to build their party, legally or otherwise.

Most Shas voters do not support concessions to the Palestinians and most of them voted for Benjamin Nethanyahu in the last elections. However, Ovadia Yosef proclaimed that is permissible to give back land in order to save lives, and the Shas party support the peace process on that basis. Barak hopes that with the support of Shas from within the government, and of Meretz from without, he will obtain the votes needed to approve a settlement with the Palestinians. The settlement would also have to be approved by referendum.

However, having sold his soul for peace, Barak can’t be sure that Shas will stick to their part of the bargain. Shas leader Eli Ishai expressed grave doubts on the subject of further concessions to Palestinians. Shas leaders now know that the supposedly tough former general is a marshmallow when faced with the generals in the Army of the Lord, so it is likely that they will “hang tough” regarding any prospective settlement.

If there is some doubt about immediate prospects, there is none about the long term consequences. The capitulation of Ehud Barak is another step in the descent of modern Israel into religion and barbarism. This government might have been the last chance to educate a generation in the principles of secular democracy. Sarid had introduced many innovations with an eye to education for peace and to fairness to the Arab minorities, after a long period in which the Ministry of Education was mostly in the hands of right-wing religious factions.