Signs of Eli Yishai’s fealty to his Shas party’s spiritual leader, the
89-year-old Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, abound in the offices of the minister of the
interior.
Photographs of the venerable sage mix with framed awards to the
minister in the corridor outside Yishai’s office. And near the minister’s desk,
a series of non- posed, informal snaps of the former chief rabbi engaged in
various everyday activities has been collected and framed – underlining the
routine, everyday nature of the relationship between the deputy prime minister
and his mentor.
Aryeh Deri, Yishai’s acutely savvy predecessor as leader
of the party’s Knesset faction, had a reputation in Shas circles for being able
to gently steer the elderly rabbi toward positions with which he, Deri, felt
most comfortable. When Deri, who might just have become Israel’s first
ultra-Orthodox prime minister, fell foul of the law a decade ago, Yosef opted to
replace him with Yishai, a skilled politician but no intellectual match. What
Yishai is, however, is dutiful.
Aides say Yishai, 47, consults with the
rabbi on a daily basis – genuinely consults, that is. He seeks out the rabbi’s
guidance, and he follows it. To the letter.
When, at the tail end of this
interview, my colleague Gil Hoffman was so bold as to ask Yishai what would
become of Shas when, as even the greatest of men must, Yosef shuffles off this
mortal coil, Yishai would have none of it: The rabbi should live to be 120, and
we could talk again after that.
When Hoffman pushed his luck still
further, and inquired as to how Yishai felt about a rumbling Deri political
comeback, Yishai, looking only slightly pained, said his predecessor would of
course be welcomed back. In what role? That too, like everything, would be up to
the rabbi.
Shas was founded, initially to compete for seats on the
Jerusalem City Council in 1983, as an act of political assertion by the
ultra-Orthodox Sephardi community – a declaration of maturity, and of Yosef-led
independence from the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox establishment.
And Yosef,
regarded as a peerless scholar in this community – “There’s no one who comes up
to his shoelaces,” said a Yishai aide – has charted a unique course, sometimes
deferring to Ashkenazi norms and rulings, but on occasion forging an
independent, apparently slightly less stringent path.
On religious
matters, for instance, he plainly has wanted Shas to be perceived as more
lenient, though still emphatically halachic, in its approach to conversions to
Judaism. On matters of diplomacy and security, similarly, he has repeatedly
asserted the need to make farreaching compromises with Israel’s enemies in the
cause of genuine peace.
Often, however, when push has come to shove –
perhaps because of an awareness of its voters’ predilections, and perhaps
because of an abiding, even subconscious deference to the Ashkenazi
establishment – Shas policy in practice has been more hawkish than in
theory.
In terms of religious dogma, it has been as critical as any
ultra- Orthodox party of non-Orthodox streams of Judaism, on conversion and
everything else. The rabbi himself has uttered a stream of problematic
statements marginalizing non- Orthodox Jews and showing hostility for secular
Jews, going so far as to ascribe the Holocaust to the misbehavior of Jewish
sinners.
And, on the diplomatic front, though Yosef encouraged the dovish
Shimon Peres’s ill-fated efforts to outflank the hawkish Yitzhak Shamir in a
tussle for the prime ministership in 1990, Shas abandoned prime minister Ehud
Barak’s governing coalition ahead of the 2000 Camp David push for peace with the
Palestinians.
In this interview, a rare, extensive conversation, Yishai,
presumably under direct orders from the rabbi, also championed a series of
hardline positions – beginning with his insistence on the deportation of
hundreds of children of foreign workers who are in the country
illegally.
The minister was earnest, candid, dogmatic and, in some cases,
persuasive. Moderate, in the ostensible spirit of Rabbi Ovadia, however, he was
not.
BACKED UP by the High Court, Yishai has been sticking to his guns on
the foreign workers issue, in the face of protests even from the current and
most recent prime ministerial wives, Sara Netanyahu and Aliza Olmert.
On
my way in to interview Yishai, I heard Aharon Castro, the Greek-born founder of
the Castro clothing company, recalling the persecution suffered by his own
family overseas, and claiming that in Israel’s treatment of foreign workers’
children, we are showing ourselves to have “lost our compassion.”
Castro
specifically disputed Yishai’s contention, as stated in a Knesset speech two
weeks ago, that the illegal foreign workers were here on “a free ride,” and
declared that the imminent deportations reflected an approach that was “not
Jewish.”
Yishai firmly rejected the criticisms.
“We’re not talking
about orphans or refugees,” he stressed, answering questions in his trademark
soft but rapidfire sentences. “I’ve never refused to authorize refugee status
for those whom the relevant committee had characterized as a
refugee.”
The controversy over the imminent deportations of 400 foreign
workers’ children and their families – 800 others are being allowed to stay –
was an exercise in “hypocrisy,” he insisted. “These kids came with their
parents, who either entered Israel illegally or stayed on illegally. Any normal
country would tell them to pack their suitcases and leave.”
Yishai, who
has five kids of his own, charged that these parents were “using their children
as a human shield [against the imposition of Israeli law], as an insurance
policy.” He said he was “more sensitive to these children” than any of his
critics, that he had arranged grants to enable the families to return smoothly
to their countries of origin and that the proper arrangements would be made for
them to ship home their belongings. Over the years, he added, he had intervened
to make sure the foreign workers were paid fairly and not abused by
employers.
“But if we say yes to these children, we’ll create a ‘baby
visa’ phenomenon, opening the floodgates to tens of thousands” of illegals, he
said, people who’d come in as tourists with their children and stay here en
masse. “Those who recommend this are making a mockery of the State of Israel,”
the minister complained.
But why not make an exception for these 400, now
that Israel had finally formulated a policy to be followed from now on? Yishai
would not be moved.
Prime ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert had both
“made exceptions,” he said.
“Sharon and Olmert both said ‘a bit more and
then that’s it’,” he recalled. “But there is no end to it. Next year there’ll be
another 1,000 children, and another 1,000. “I wouldn’t let any of them
stay here, not 800, not one. Not one family,” he said
bitterly.
“All of them have completed their service here. Entered
illegally or staying here illegally? They should go back to where they came
from.”
GOOD-NATURED THROUGHOUT our conversation, Yishai was similarly
unbending, nonetheless, when we turned to the issue of non-Orthodox conversions
– the latest installment in the periodic “Who is a Jew” crises that threaten to
deepen rifts between Israel and much of Diaspora Jewry.
He chose not to
directly answer a question as to whether Shas is taking a significant part in
the consultations, being brokered by Jewish Agency head Natan Sharansky,
designed to find a compromise formula on conversion legislation over the next
six months.
Instead, doubtless reflecting Rabbi Yosef’s approach as ever,
he said only that Shas was “in favor of bringing in to Judaism those who truly
want to convert, which means converting according to Halacha.”
He then
chose to cite unspecified academic research into the issue of “Jewish” genes,
and asserted – curiously – that “a convert, if he converts through the Orthodox,
he has the Jewish gene. If he doesn’t convert through the Orthodox, he doesn’t
have the Jewish gene. As simple as that.”
From there, he moved on
to lament the accelerating process of assimilation in the US. “To prevent this
assimilation, you have to have real halachic conversion,” he declared. That
meant saying no, he said, to “people who just want to join a club.” Via the
Reform,” he elaborated, “it’s very easy to get in – easier than getting into a
club.”
Were Israel to accept Reform conversions performed here, he
continued, bringing the discussion back round to the issue of foreign workers,
“Tomorrow, you’d have hundreds of thousands of foreign workers converting.
There’d be no end to it. You’d lose the Jewish character of the Jewish
state. The original High Court appeal [to legalize non- Orthodox conversions
performed here] more than 10, 20 years ago, was filed by two Palestinians who
didn’t want to leave the country. Foreign workers and Palestinians would
use conversion to stay.”
When it was put to him that the whole “Who is a
Jew” furor stemmed from the sense among non-Orthodox Jews overseas that Israel
was en route to legislate in such a way as to tell Reform and Conservative
Judaism that they are not legitimate, however, Yishai was adamant that this was
not the case.
“Not at all. That’s not true,” he said. “The High Court has
already ruled that anyone who has undergone Reform conversion abroad is
registered here as a Jew. This is about the State of Israel. Just as the state’s
Chief Rabbinate grants divorces and recognizes marriages by legal entitlement,
since the establishment of the state, so, too, it is the authority on
conversions here.”
(In fact, in contrast to its monopoly over marriage,
the Chief Rabbinate does not enjoy exclusive authority over conversions in
Israel, and the current conversion crisis has been fueled in part by efforts by
some ultra-Orthodox legislators to grant it that monopoly for the first time.)
“We are losing the Jewish people in the Diaspora,” Yishai reiterated, “50,000
people a year to intermarriage. It’s because of the nonhalachic
conversions. I tell the Reform to stop fighting against the interests of the
Jewish people.”
Plainly, for Yishai, conversion through the Reform is no
better than no conversion at all; not for him the idea that even a non-Orthodox
entree into the faith is preferable to no connection at all. “To my sorrow,
those who convert through the Reform abroad are registered here as Jews. To my
sorrow. But if you want to convert here, it must be through the laws of Israel.
If you want to be Jewish, welcome, but convert via the Halacha.”
All of
which begged this question: Did Yishai, and Shas, believe Israel should be a
halachic state? “Until the Messiah comes, this won’t be a halachic state,” he
responded without hesitation.
But the fact is, he went on, that “for
2,000 years, before the establishment of the state, we were in exile – in
Morocco, in Iran, Iraq, Romania, Poland, Russia, Yemen, Ethiopia, the world
over. Without a state, an army, a flag and an anthem. And we survived. Empires
came and went while we, the Jewish people, persecuted relentlessly, facing
expulsions and pogroms and the Holocaust, survived. We survived thanks to the
Torah and faith in the Lord.”
Hammering home his earlier point, Yishai
declared: “If we would have given up conversion by Halacha then, we would have
been lost long ago. Not because of the disasters that befell us, but because of
our own actions. If we had abandoned the Torah, and abandoned conversion by
Halacha, we’d have disappeared a thousand years ago. Hundreds of years
ago. There’d be no Jewish people.
“So here,” he asked, almost
plaintively, “where the Jews have gathered from the Diaspora, here we should
give it up? This is a real struggle over the Jewish nature of the state. And we
ask the Reform to respect this most important demand, to respect the principle
that has preserved the Jewish people for thousands of years. If we don’t
maintain the principle of conversion by Halacha, we will
disappear.”
FINALLY, WHEN the conversation turned to the issue of
peacemaking, Yishai characteristically cited Yosef’s generally moderate approach
but, also characteristically, was relatively uncompromising on the
specifics.
He praised Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for demonstrating
his peacemaking credentials via his public commitment to a twostate solution and
the unprecedented freeze on new building starts that has applied throughout the
West Bank since November and is due to expire next month.
But he was
adamant that the freeze could not be maintained in full any longer. “The prime
minister clearly can’t continue the freeze, formally or practically,” Yishai
declared, a significant statement given the international pressure Netanyahu is
coming under to do precisely that.
“The prime minister made extraordinary
efforts to bring Abu Mazen to direct negotiations,” he went on. “Olmert built
here, he built there. But Netanyahu went with the freeze. They say Netanyahu
doesn’t want to advance the peace process? There’s no greater proof to show the
world that he is willing to advance the diplomatic process than the
freeze.
“Abu Mazen used to meet with Olmert every few weeks, once a
month,” Yishai recalled of the Palestinian Authority president. “No freeze, no
nothing. Bibi comes along and does the freeze, and there hasn’t even been a
single meeting. So I ask you, does Abu Mazen want peace? If Abu Mazen wanted
peace, he’d have shown the courage and come to meet. Bibi has asked, almost
begged, every day, but Abu Mazen doesn’t care. He doesn’t want
peace.”
Speaking faster than ever now, in tones of ever-deeper
indignation, Yishai set out a position far beyond mere mistrust of the
Palestinian leadership’s intentions.
“Rabbi Ovadia Yosef said to do
everything for peace. But we need the minimal things: peace with security. We
can’t make peace with someone who says, from the outset, that he doesn’t
recognize a Jewish state. Fatah decided at its last convention that Palestine
will not be liberated until the Zionist entity is destroyed. Abbas is not
prepared to recognize the Jewish state. He wants to destroy the Jewish
state.”
Did Yishai draw no distinction between Fatah’s public positions
and Abbas’s? “He accepted the decision,” said Yishai. “Fatah is his
party. Fatah is Abbas. He’s the head of Fatah. He didn’t say no. He
approved it.”
So why, then, was Israel desperately seeking a dialogue
with him? “Because, despite everything, we desire peace. We try
everything.”
Then why not extend the settlement freeze? Because “we can’t
put our head in the sand. It cannot be that we take steps and he
doesn’t.”
Trying to move from the negative to the positive, Yishai
ventured that “For real peace, we need a few years of economic peace... which
will show the Palestinian people the benefits – prosperity and
employment. Then they’ll see that to thrive further, they must sign a
peace accord. It must come from the people. I don’t know a Palestinian
leader who can make a deal now. None of them is capable. For that, you
need the people’s support. But if we have economic peace, the Palestinian people
will support a deal.”
But still, if the government so deeply wants to
give negotiations a chance, why jeopardize substantive talks by renewing
building in West Bank areas Israel doesn’t anticipate keeping? Yishai answered
half the question: “First of all, it must be clear that under any agreement, the
settlement blocs will be maintained,” he said. “So there’s no justification for
a complete freeze.”
Okay. But what about a freeze outside the settlement
blocs? Personally, he said, “I also support building outside of the blocs. I
don’t accept the claim that the settlements are hurting the diplomatic process,
because the Palestinians don’t want peace.”
So much for the Shas
position. But what did he, a member of the key ministerial septet, think the
government would ultimately decide? “I imagine that the compromise will be that
the prime minister will advance building only in the blocs – as a gesture,” said
Yishai. “Another effort to advance the political process.”
I ASKED the
interior minister whether, as some people have suggested to me, the Ramat Shlomo
crisis erupted last spring because he had been unaware that the north Jerusalem
neighborhood lies inside post-67 “east Jerusalem.”
Was that why, I
wondered, the controversial announcement of new building in the neighborhood was
permitted even as Vice President Joe Biden was making a visit here? Maybe
someone, perhaps even the minister himself, didn’t realize that Ramat Shlomo was
over the Green Line? “That’s not the case,” said Yishai.
“The fact is
that no Israeli government ever thought for a second about halting building in
Jerusalem. Never since 1967. Nobody considered not building in Ramot,
Gilo, Pisgat Ze’ev, Ramat Shlomo, Neveh Ya’acov. 250,000 Jews live
there.”
Retreading the vexed territory, he stressed that there was no
official ministry or government announcement of building plans in Ramat Shlomo,
merely a routine decision by a district planning body. And “the attorney-general
has ruled that it is forbidden to interfere with their work.”
Similar
decisions were made in the past, including when president George W. Bush and
secretary of state Condoleezza Rice were here, he noted. “Nobody made a fuss
then...The fuss [in March] was because some people made a panic out of
this, to my sorrow. Even the Americans understand that it was a routine
decision. What happened was unfortunate.”
But now the mechanism was in
place to avoid a repetition? “Netanyahu committed that when there is a visit,
we’ll do nothing to create unnecessary tensions,” said Yishai, stressing,
however, that “The mechanism is only when there is an official visit – that week
or two.”
More broadly, then, did Shas endorse what appears to be a
certain limited new flexibility in the prime minister’s thinking on Jerusalem –
a willingness to discuss Jerusalem in direct talks and even to reconsider the
status of Arab neighborhoods? Yishai was, as so often in the conversation,
unyielding.
“Jerusalem is Israel’s eternal capital. Any compromise
in Jerusalem would cause unnecessary conflict. I don’t see a compromise
anywhere
in Jerusalem.”
And that included Arab neighborhoods like Shuafat, Abu
Dis? “The Arabs of the city must have equality. I am for equality. I let
them
build equally,” he said. “[But] I am against transferring
sovereignty. Jerusalem isn’t so much as mentioned in the Koran. Jerusalem
was given to us by the creator.”