Not at any price
By Yosef Lapid
Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef's remark about the
"wicked people" who forced Aryeh Deri to resign from the temporal leadership
of Shas, even though in God's eyes Deri remains the chairman of Shas, is
embarrassing to Prime Minister-elect Ehud Barak and Meretz leader Yossi
Sarid.Deri, with all his sins, is just a scapegoat. Sacrificing him allows
One Israel and Meretz to pretend that the leaders of Shas have mended their
evil ways, that the billions of shekels in their circular deals have done an
about face, that the problem of conscripting yeshiva boys has been solved,
that there is no longer any need for a constitution that will regulate the
relationship between religion and state once and for all, that Rabbi Yosef
has retracted the accusations he hurled at the judges in Israel, that all
the scandals to which Shas has been linked have been cleaned up, that the
trade in amulets, holy water, sorcery, dybbuks and the exploitation of the
naive in nocturnal rituals at the graves of holy men has ceased, that the
pirate radio stations that preach hatred of the secular have been closed
down and that the horse trading in kashrut certificates has been ended. As
if all this had never happened.
Is this the change that Prime Minister-elect Ehud Barak promised his
voters? Is this the alternative society Sarid wanted to establish? Everyone
knows that nothing has changed, and now Rabbi Yosef comes along and admits:
Shas must come into the coalition, because it has accumulated a debt of NIS
1000 million and who will provide what is lacking if not the secular
taxpayers? The robbery of the public coffers will continue if Shas is
allowed to get near the safe.
But the heads of One Israel and Meretz are playing innocent - why?
Because Shas's Knesset members are 17 in number. (All of them men, of
course.) If there were no more than the 10 Knesset members required for
public prayers in the Shas faction, they would not be worthy partners for
the spotless leftist camp. But as there are so many of them, they are loyal
partners to those who want to establish a more just and enlightened society
here.
And who makes it kosher for One Israel and Meretz to betray the
trust of their voters, if not the round-spectacled publicists and the
intellectual do-gooders who have decided that, for the sake of the
longed-for peace, it is permissible to lie to ourselves? Shas will be a more
convenient partner for negotiations with Palestinian Authority Chairman
Yasser Arafat and Syrian President Hafez Assad than the Likud. Therefore,
the public that elected the 17 Shas Knesset members "must not be
disqualified," but it is permitted, even a good deed, to disqualify the
public that elected the 19 members from the Likud.
But this is not only a matter of peace. This is also prissiness and
hypocrisy, talking down to the "ignorant masses," populism of the sort that
has brought any number of disasters to the world, lip service that blond,
blue-eyed native-born Israelis are paying to the Jews originating in the
Muslim countries as atonement for the imaginary and real sins of their
fathers.
Shas is the only political party in Israel that proudly declares its
ethnic nature and paradoxically accuses its opponents of "racism." It is
worth remembering that two-thirds of the Jews whose origins are in the
Muslim countries did not vote for Shas. They see themselves as an integral
part of Israeli society and do not want to be considered in terms of their
origins.
The social phenomena that brought Shas its achievements are in need
of repair, but on A social basis, not an ethinic basis. The distress of the
development towns and the poverty of many neighborhoods cry to the heavens,
especially in light of the widening gap between the upper and lower tenths.
To Shas's credit it must be noted that it located the severity of the
problem. The role of the state is to devote huge resources to improving the
levels of education and employment in the areas that cry out for help. Such
resources should not go to the improvement of ultra-Orthodox education, a
page of Gemara with nothing behind it, but toward national, Zionist and
creative education. They should go not toward artificial employment, but to
productive work.
There is a real danger that the interethnic wars will unravel the
fabric that is binding us together as a single national entity. The
deepening of the ethnic gap is an unforgivable sin and a betrayal of the
Zionist idea. False enlightenment will not help here. Theodor Herzl dreamt
of a new Jew, free of the residues of the ghettoes. We were on the way to
creating a unified nation, by virtue of the Hebrew language, Hebrew culture,
Hebrew labor, Hebrew settlement, the Israel Defense Forces and the national
education system. And it was by virtue of the fact that we are all Jews -
not Sephardim or Ashkenazim, but Israelis.
Instead of paying lip service to divisive and destructive ethnicity,
instead of the sly attempt we are witnessing to buy Shas's votes with a
honeyed tongue and bribes, we must remember (and remind Ehud Barak) that in
the recent elections the secular parties won three-quarters of the Jewish
vote. These voters are entitled to a government that will faithfully
represent them. Being a part of the government is not an end in itself, but
rather a means to achieving declared goals. If the price of a seat in the
government is a partnership that perpetuates the sins of the past, there is
nothing to be gained with such a government.
Yosef Lapid is a newly elected MK and the leader
of Shinui
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