Posted on 02/24/2003 10:50:53 AM PST by anotherview
Feb. 24, 2003
Shas accuses Sharon of betrayal, excommunicates NRP
By GIL HOFFMAN
Shas officials reacted angrily to being left out of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government on Monday, issuing scathing criticism of Sharon and his coalition partners, Shinui, and the National Religious Party.
The party's spiritual leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, called Sharon, "the king of garbage cans," and compared Shinui to garbage and refuse. On the verge of tears, Yosef said that the National Religious Party behaved worse than anti-Semites by bringing a secularist party like Shinui into the government.
Yosef called upon his MKs to do everything possible to bring down the government, which he predicted would not last long. He urged the faction to travel around the country, instigating public upheaval.
The rabbi said he prophesied months ago that Sharon would betray Shas by leaving the party out of the government. He quoted a verse from Deuteronomy about ungrateful people growing lazy and fat in wealth and rebelling against God, inserting Sharon's name into the verse.
"The prime minister betrayed the Likud's religious, traditional, and Sephardi electorate," Shas chairman Eli Yishai said. "The elitist, Ashkenazi, anti-social government Sharon is building will bring an economic catastrophe."
Yishai vowed to cooperate with Labor, Meretz, and other opposition parties to fight budget cuts that would hurt the poor. Meretz faction chair Zehava Gal-On received a commitment from Shas for the two parties, which have little in common, to work together on social issues.
"Sharon already managed to do more damage than Ehud Barak with his short-lived secular revolution," Yishai said. "He will regret making this mistake, and letting the 38 mandates he won go to his head."
Yishai reserved his strongest criticism, however, for the NRP, which he no less than excommunicated from Orthodox Judaism. He said he would no longer allow the NRP to participate in the Knesset's religious lobby.
Shas MKs took turns slamming the NRP with Biblical metaphors. Yishai compared NRP Chairman Effi Eitam to the Babylonian tyrant Nebuchadnetzar, saying that they both placed an idol in the sanctuary.
MK Yitzhak Vaknin took a note from last week's Torah portion, comparing the NRP to the Golden Calf and Shinui to the 'Erev Rav,' the mixed multitude of subverters who joined the Exodus from Egypt.
The criticism of Eitam was just as strong in the Ashkenazi haredi world, where Degel Hatorah sage Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv said Eitam would not be Construction and Housing Minister, to: "Destruction Minister."
Eitam responded to the criticism by telling The Jerusalem Post: "There is no justification in inciting against the hundreds of thousands of Jews who served in the IDF and voted NRP."
LOL, tell us what you really think!
That's democracy -- loud, vulgar and crude, and I love it. Compare that to the Saudi rubber-stamp joke of a "consultative council".
Don't have a source handy right now, but I read about a year ago that Jordanian members of parliament were learning Hebrew so that they can follow televised Knesset debates and crack the elusive mystery of adversarial politics :-)
Is it me, or is Shas just a little bit peeved?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.