Shas MK Haim Amsalem responded on Friday to the speculation in
Ma’ariv,
according to which he is preparing the ground to form a new party to compete
with Shas for the votes of religiously committed Sephardim.
“MK Rabbi
Haim Amsalem is a member of Shas and active in it, and from within it, in order
to change and amend what is needed, for the benefit of the People of Israel and
the Torah of Israel,” his Facebook status declared. “The political conjectures
written by Shalom Yerushalmi in
Ma’ariv are his own speculations.”
In a
piece based on conversations with Amsalem but also purportedly on more
conclusive information from unnamed sources close to the legislator, veteran
political commentator Yerushalmi drew up the lines for Amsalem's projected new
party, which would promote haredi employment and army service, all from a
halachically committed standpoint.
Amsalem, 51, is one of Shas’s most
outspoken legislators on matters relating to state and religion, perhaps due to
the fact that unlike the other MKs, he is a rabbi by training, and does not
hesitate to draw on the Jewish sources to prove the importance of working for
those incapable of dedicating their life to Torah study, or how the rabbinical
establishment should encourage the conversion to Judaism of Israelis with Jewish
roots who tied their fate with that of the Jewish people, such as the hundreds
of thousands of olim from the FSU who are not halachically Jewish but serve in
the IDF.