Good riddance to Deri
David M. Weinberg
Everybody knew that
Aryeh Deri's return as the top honcho in Shas was bad news. His brand
of blithely sectorial, brusquely cynical politics was bound to lead to a
bitter breakup with Eli Yishai.
Deri has been a shady character and retrogressive figure in Israeli politics from the start.
He was one of the
father figures of the haredi world of dependency, of living off the
dole. He was central to the creation of the all-encompassing government
support system for those studying in yeshiva; a system so
comprehensive that it simply doesn't pay for a kollel man to step out
into the working world. He has never spoken positively about the higher
education and professional-training programs for the ultra-Orthodox
that have opened in recent years, nor has he said one word about the
importance of increased participation of haredim in the army.
Deri has always been
eminently flexible. He would cut any deal with anyone of any background
if it served his momentary political purpose. He manipulated every
government committee to favor Shas party hacks and to get his brothers
and allies appointed as government-paid rabbis. He monkeyed with
daylight saving time every year, when he thought that sold to his voter
base. He whispered wicked things, as needed, about religious Zionists,
or secular or Russian or Reform Jews, or Likud politicians, in the
ears of his "spiritual patrons," first the late Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, and
more recently Rabbi Shalom Cohen.
Deri can directly be
blamed for turning Yosef away from his earlier path of religious and
political moderation. Deri was almost certainly the person who
whispered wicked things about Naftali Bennett's Habayit Hayehudi
(Jewish Home) party in the ears of Yosef, leading to the rabbi's
outrageous outburst that Bennett leads the "home of goyim" party.
Deri was also behind
the infamous, racist Dial-a-Conversion advertising campaign that Shas
ran in the last elections. This campaign smeared Russian immigrants as
counterfeit converts, and slandered religious Zionist rabbis as liberal
destroyers of conversion standards.
I conjecture that Deri
would sell every settler to the Saudis, twice over, if that would earn
Shas-affiliated schools a 5 percent budget increase. After all, Deri
spawned the failed "stinking maneuver" in 1990 which attempted to bring
down the unity government led by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and
install a narrow Shimon Peres-led government instead. Deri bought the
Labor party's support for haredi takeover of state religious
enterprises (such as the Chief Rabbinate and religious courts) by
backing the Oslo process -- until the Second Intifada made it too
difficult for Shas voters to stomach this.
Then, last fall, Deri
launched an assault on a Likud stronghold by joining forces with
Avigdor Lieberman in an attempt to capture the Jerusalem municipality
and unseat Jerusalem's impressive mayor, Nir Barkat, through the
implausible straw-candidacy of Moshe Lion. Fortunately, Deri lost that
battle. Lion and Lieberman's key party allies are now under
investigation for corruption.
I wish I believed that
Deri truly was exiting Israeli politics this week. I suspect, however,
that Deri's "resignation" yesterday from the Knesset and from the Shas
party leadership is just another "stinking maneuver" meant to
re-catapult the wheeling-dealing Deri back into the driver's seat.
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