Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Shtrasler, Herzl is turning in his grave, Haaretz, March 14, 2008

Shas once understood that it was undesirable to impose its worldview on the majority, that it was preferable to use friendly persuasion. Today Shas wants to change the country’s image. Yishai has become an expert at extortion, and Olmert is willing to pay. He is buying Shas with money and benefits, as well as laws and regulations that are changing the country’s character.

About two months ago Olmert agreed to reestablish the Religious Affairs Ministry for Shas. A few days ago he transferred NIS 450 million to Shas, a political gift to fund the yeshiva students, and recently he gave Rafael Pinhasi, one of the Shas strongmen (a former MK, with a criminal conviction) the position of chair of the Tel Aviv cemeteries council. More power, more money and more appointments.

Recently there was a dangerous proposal made in cooperation with Social Affairs Minister Isaac Herzog of Labor - which almost passed in the cabinet - to expand the powers of the rabbinical courts, according to a demand by Shas. Recently a Shas draft bill to restrict surfing the Internet passed its first reading, and the Shas minister of communications, Big Brother Ariel Atias, will be the chief censor. Just like Saudi Arabia.

Shas is currently promoting a draft bill that will restrict the right to an abortion, and an arrangement to censor billboards so that “immodest models” will not be seen on them.

Olmert also agreed to establish a team of ministers headed by Yishai to examine an increase in child allowances, and recently the government decided to establish a state conversion authority. By demand of Shas, the government allowed it to appoint its own dayanim (rabbinical court judges) to the conversion courts.

We are gradually and systematically losing the modern Western country in which we were educated. Olmert is selling the principles of humanism, tolerance, freedom and civil rights to Yishai in a liquidation sale.

Israeli MP blames quakes on gays, BBC, Feb. 20, 2008

An Israeli MP has blamed parliament’s tolerance of gays for earthquakes that have rocked the Holy Land recently.

Shlomo Benizri, of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Shas Party, said the tremors had been caused by lawmaking that gave “legitimacy to sodomy”.

Israel decriminalised homosexuality in 1988 and has since passed several laws recognising gay rights.

Two earthquakes shook the region last week and a further four struck in November and December.

Shtrasler, The donkey’s burden - Haaretz, Dec. 4, 2007

“Secular teachers are not teachers, they are donkeys,” declared Shas’ spiritual leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, in his weekly sermon Saturday night. They are donkeys because they do not teach the Torah, he explained to his audience.

But it seems not only the teachers are donkeys. Israel’s entire secular population takes pains to ensure its children study mathematics, English, science, history and Torah, so they can become productive citizens living by their labor and paying high taxes - which are then divided among Yosef’s followers. They also enlist in the army, are wounded and killed - in part, to protect Yosef’s home. Whoever behaves this way must truly be an ass.

One of the teachers’ demands is for fewer pupils per classroom. The public school system is home to the greatest overcrowding, which is less prevalent in the public-religious system and least felt in the Shas and United Torah Judaism religious schools. The reason for this stems from the division of public-religious and ultra-Orthodox education into dozens of different offshoots, each with its own school.

Thus, tens of millions of shekels are wasted on these small, inefficient schools, which are convenient for the sheep in Yosef’s flock; they benefit daily from longer school days, lunches and transportation - all paid for by the state, which lacks the funds to offer the same conditions in the public school system. In other words, to offer the donkeys the same.

Gideon Levy, Longing for Deri, Haaretz, December 2, 2007

In a tailored suit, his beard well groomed, and no longer bespectacled, Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishai shuttled from interview to interview: “Nothing will emerge from Annapolis.” This minister of nothing now constitutes the government’s right-wing benchmark, competing with Avigdor Lieberman over who is more extreme and who will be first to quit the government.

These two ministers represent ethnicity, and both paint their ethnic focus in strong nationalist colors. But while Lieberman represents a party that was founded on racism, Yishai received a relatively moderate party and took it to the extreme right. Seeing him makes one long for the party’s founder, Aryeh Deri. Deri’s Shas was not a left-wing party, but it expressed relatively moderate political positions and even refrained from undermining the first Oslo agreement (although it opposed Oslo II).

The new Shas, on the other hand, acts and talks as if it is seeking war, and is doing its utmost to undermine the prime minister’s efforts - which seem sincere - to end the conflict. This is not just a matter of ideological oscillation. The problem is that Yishai is leading a broad public - some of whom are moderate - to racism, extreme nationalism and hatred of Arabs. He has restored the old status quo to its glory: Mizrahim, versus the Arabs and peace. His views, therefore, are disastrous.

Completely lacking the charisma and personal charm of his predecessor, Yishai has benighted views: He recently spoke about “medication” for homosexuality. He has said he finds the sale of pork, civil marriages and workshops for Jewish and Arab teenagers equally disgusting, which brings him in line with his uncivil spiritual mentor, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.

Is the (Haredi) party over? - Haaretz, October 16, 2007

Deri believes that the existence of ultra-Orthodox parties antagonizes the secular public, bringing about “phenomena like Shinui, that makes secular people think that the ultra-Orthodox want to force their lifestyle on them.” In short, said Deri, the ultra-Orthodox parties “create hatred and confrontation without being very useful.” As long as the ultra-Orthodox continue to operate within sectarian political parties, Deri stressed, the usefulness of such parties in terms of serving Haredi interests “will be small and the damage, in my humble opinion, will be great….”

According to Deri, the main internal struggle that Israeli society will face after “the implementation of the disengagement puts an end to political debate,” will be “the cultural struggle for the general character of the state. On the one hand are Shinui and others who want a completely Western and totally free country, and on the other hand, the whole public, that wants the country to be - to one degree or another - a Jewish state.” The ultra-Orthodox, he said, have got to get involved in this struggle together with traditional Jews in the Likud and other parties.

Cartoon spat prompts Shas to quit Knesset religious lobby - Haaretz, October 16, 2007

A new crisis has erupted between the Ashkenazi and Sephardi ultra-Orthodox over the usual bones of contention: racism, money, and politics. The quarrel resulted Monday in Shas announcing its resignation from the religious lobby in the Knesset.

The current round began when Shas’ spiritual leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, saw a cartoon in Yeted Ne’eman, the flagship journal of Degel HaTorah, the “Lithuanian wing” of the Ashkenazi Haredim.

The cartoon showed a man dressed in shorts and sandals wearing a skullcap and trimmed black beard, representing a Shas follower, in cahoots with a secular person representing Kadima. Wearing a big grin, the two were dumping a rock labeled “2008 cuts” on the head of a Haredi man.

The symbols appear obvious, lacking sophistication, and according to Shas, loaded with anti-Semitism and racism of the sort Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox feel about Sephardi Haredim. MK Yakov Margi, chairman of the Shas faction in the Knesset, said Ovadia Yosef was deeply offended.

“He saw the caricature and protested strongly, telling us to respond very strongly,” Margi said. The response came Monday, with Shas announcing its resignation from the religious lobby in the Knesset, which is headed by United Torah Judaism.

“Degel HaTorah and its journal Yeted Ne’eman have set out as policy to continue racism and hatred of Sephardim,” the faction said in a statement. “For the first time an anti-Semitic cartoon that would not have shamed any anti-Semitic paper in the world was published. The Degel HaTorah leadership must rid itself from its hatred for Sephardim, from its patronizing attitude for the Sephardi community, which was its habit before the establishment of Shas.”

Ben Simon, The oracle of the right - Haaretz, October 16, 2007

The more time passes, the clearer it becomes that the foreign policy worldview of Shas fluctuates between the right and the extreme right. Eli Yishai, the party’s current leader, has in the past several years laid down a blunt foreign policy that has pushed it from moderation to extremism. Not a day goes by that he does not lay out his red lines and warn against any possibility of compromise with the Palestinians.

Yishai has already threatened Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, telling him that if he dares to address the core issues of the conflict at the Annapolis summit, Yishai and his party will leave the coalition. In doing so, he became one of the main agents who has made the gathering superfluous even before it has begun.

It was not always this way. When Shas burst onto the political scene in 1984, it voiced moderate opinions….

It is a great pity that the party that was born in order to rouse the poor and the disadvantaged and to restore the lost glory of the Sephardim has turned into yet another extremist right-wing party. It forgot its initial motto and is now up to its neck in an unprecedented fever of religious revivalism. One more fundamentalism movement, crazed by religion.

And what of the oppressed, screwed-over poor? Well, since Shas joined the government, they have only become more numerous. It’s enough to look at the shocking poverty figures published each year by the National Insurance Institute to recognize that Shas broke its promise to the poor.

No room for ‘misfits’ - Haaretz - Israel News, September 21, 2007

“Zman yehudi hadash” is a white project that corresponds with Europe and North America while casually erasing entire Jewish histories, those lived by the Jews of the Islamic countries.

As I pointed out last week, the encyclopedia’s editorial board consists of 14 learned members, among them only one woman (Shulamit Volkov) and one Mizrahi (Michel Abitbol). And what about the contributors? The five volumes contain some 380 entries written by about 240 different authors. Of the 380, 67 were written by women (about 18 percent), three by Arabs (on “Arab topics”), and 15 at most were written by Mizrahim (about 4 percent).

This bias, which is even more severe than the outrageously low representation of these groups among Israeli university faculty members - where the numbers are 20 percent women, 7 percent Mizrahi and about 1.5 percent Arabs - is also evident in the contents of the different entries. It is astonishing to see, for example, how for most of the writers, Mizrahi Jews simply do not fall within their field of vision.

Les ultra-orthodoxes israéliens exigent le respect de la shmita, année sabbatique pour les cultures, Le Monde.fr, le 14 septembre 2007

A l’occasion du Nouvel An juif, jeudi 13 septembre, jour où débute la 5 768e année du calendrier hébraïque, la question de l’année sabbatique se pose à nouveau. Jusqu’à présent, les arrangements étaient facilement acceptés. Il suffisait, en fait, de procéder à des ventes fictives de terrains à des non-juifs et le tour était joué. Cela permettait aux juifs de continuer à cultiver leurs champs et surtout d’obtenir le certificat de kashrout nécessaire pour vendre les produits et les consommer en accord avec les préceptes de la religion juive. L’année suivante, les terres étaient restituées aux propriétaires et personne n’y trouvait vraiment rien à redire. Sauf quelques orthodoxes ultras qui estimaient que ces tours de passe-passe ne respectaient pas la lettre des textes.

“LES LOIS DE LA TORAH”

Cette année 5768, les choses sont différentes. Les orthodoxes juifs, les haredim, font une énorme pression sur le grand rabbinat d’Israël pour que ces petits arrangements cessent et que l’on s’en tienne à la Halakha, le droit rabbinique. “Pas question de contourner les lois de la Torah même si l’on a beaucoup de sympathie pour les difficultés des paysans”, explique le rabbin Meir Bergman, chef d’un groupe ultraorthodoxe. Et d’ajouter : “Dieu pourvoira à leurs besoins.”

Outrage after Yosef links troops dying, religosity, Jerusalem Post, August 27, 2007
Officials from across the political and military spectrums slammed Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef Monday for a sermon in which Yosef said troops killed in the Second Lebanon War lost their lives because of their lack of religious observance.

Eli Ben-Shem, chairman of the Yad Labanim organization, which represents families of fallen soldiers, called Yosef’s remarks “shameful” and said that the comments had provoked angry phone calls to the organization, specifically from religious parents who “were hurt very badly.”

Ben-Shem emphasized that a large proportion of the 112 families who lost children in the war were religious and learned in yeshivot. “It is specifically those religious people that have been hurt by the comments. Secular people don’t pay much attention to him anyway,” said Ben-Shem.

Liberaland and Haredistan - Haaretz - Israel News
The burning of the Alei Shalechet crematorium probably doesn’t surprise anyone who has been following Israel’s ongoing culture war. However, Shas Minister Yitzhak Cohen’s statements have raised the stakes. He said he would push a bill criminalizing cremation, a bill that would “put an end to those who are implementing a Final Solution once again.”

Rabbi Yosef: No wonder secular IDF soldiers are killed in war - Haaretz - Israel News
Shas party spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, a former Sephardi chief rabbi of Israel, told followers in remarks broadcast on Monday that Israel Defense Forces soldiers were killed in combat because they did not observe Jewish religious laws.