Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

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.