On Saturday Night, Rav Ovadiah Yosef, the spiritual head of the Shas party said that he had to return political control of the Shas party back to Aryeh Deri, as it was promised to be returned to him (Deri) when he was sent to prison.

Eli Yishai, the successful, but now displaced Shas party head, who had replace Deri, has reportedly turned down the consolation prize of running Rav Ovadia’s El HaMaayan school network.

Rumor has it that Yishai might leave the Shas party and run for mayor of Jerusalem.

Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef has given his blessing for the charismatic Aryeh Deri to return to his former position as head of the Shas political party at the expense of Knesset Member Eli Yishai.

Since the return of Deri to the Knesset after the end of his seven-year banishment as a  result of a bribery conviction for which he was jailed, Yishai has headed the party in the Knesset. After this year’s elections, he shared the leadership with MKs Deri and Ariel Atias, who probably will head the party’s caucus in the Knesset.

Over the weekend, Shas leader Aryeh Deri, one of the architects of the “stinking maneuver” that back in 1990 attempted to take down a right-wing government in favor of one led by Shimon Peres, stared straight at the Channel 2 camera and invited Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “pick up the phone and let’s negotiate right now a coalition government” together.

As it turns out, according to Walla, Netanyahu has been talking to Shas, but with Interior Minister Eli Yishai instead, behind Deri’s back.

When Aryeh Deri, having served his prison term for corruption charges, was imposed by Rav Ovadia Yosef on the two leaders of Shas, Yishai and Housing Minister Ariel Atias, common wisdom suggested that, sooner rather than later, Deri would emerge as the real party leader, the official water carrier for “Maran,” Rav Ovadia.

But, using the ancient tactic of divide and conquer, when Rav Ovadia had his minor stroke over the weekend, Netanyahu chose to send him his wishes for a speedy recovery not through Atias or Deri, but rather through Yishai.

Walla reports that Netanyahu and Yishai have been discussing “the day after” the January 22 elections, assuring him that the Interior portfolio will stay his, despite the fact that Avigdor Liberman, his co-leader at Likud-Beitenu, wants that ministry for his own faction.

And neither Netanyahu nor Yishai appear to include Aryeh Deri in their plans for the future.

Meanwhile, the Maverick Rabbi Amnon Yitzhak, has been suggesting that Rav Ovadia Yosef is not fully in charge at Shas. Obviously, Rav Ovadia’s condition has seriously deteriorated recently—Rabbi Yizhak has suggested, according to Walla, that he lost the hearing in one ear.

With two former Shas supporters, Rabbi Amnon Yizhak and Rabbi Haim Amsalem, running independent lists and splitting the Sephardi vote, Shas may end up without the goods needed to usher it into the next government.

Reports are indicating that Aryeh Deri will return as the head of the Shas party, while Eli Yishai will receive the senior government position, assuming the party joins the next government.

The reports say that both sides have, for the most part, agreed to the terms and assuming no major changes will sign on them them soon.

Did Ha’aretz purposely twist and selectively use Eli Yishai’s words to make him sound racist, or did they leave out a very important sentence from his talk by accident?

The sub-headline in an English language article in Ha’aretz on June 3rd says:

Interior Minister says migrants do not recognize that Israel ‘belongs to the white man.’

This statement is expanded and the message reinforced at the end of the article in what is supposedly Yishai’s entire quote:

Meanwhile on Sunday, Israeli daily Maariv published an interview with Interior Minister Eli Yishai, in which he stated that most of the “Muslims that arrive here do not even believe that this country belongs to us, to the white man.” “I will continue the struggle until the end of my term, with no compramises,” Yishai continued, stating that he would use “all the tools to expel the foreigners, until not one infiltrator remains.”

One problem.

This isn’t the entire quote. One very important sentence has been excised from the middle of Yishai’s speech.

The original Hebrew in Maariv says:

רוב האנשים שבאים הנה הם מוסלמים שחושבים שהארץ בכלל לא שייכת לנו, לאדם הלבן. כמה מהם דיברו על כך בגלוי בטלוויזיה. אני הולך להמשיך את המאבק שלי עד סוף הקדנציה, בלי פשרות. אפעיל את כל הכלים לגירוש זרים. שלא יהיה כאן אף מסתנן

The first sentence is better translated as:

“Most of the people coming here are Moslems who think the land doesn’t belong to us at all, to the white man.”

With the more accurate translation above, it is clear that Yishai is not expressing his perspective, but those of the infiltrators.

The subsequent sentence, which Ha’aretz excised, leaves no doubt about whose views he was expressing:

“A number of them have said that openly on television.”

Eli Yishai is not saying Israel belongs to the ‘white man’. Eli Yishai is quoting the infiltrators, and it is the infiltrators who have said that Israel doesn’t belong to the “white man.”

Ha’aretz left out one little sentence. But that sentence dictates whether Yishai was promoting racism. The real question then, is whether Ha’aretz omitted it purposefully or by mistake? Unfortunately, its past record suggests the former over the latter.

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In a related note, last week Ha’aretz originally referred to the tent city being built to hold the infiltrators as a “Concentration Camp“, until the description was taken down an hour later.

The day after police arrested four Eritrean and Sudanese men for robbing and raping a 19 year-old woman in south Tel Aviv’s Neve Sha’anan, Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai said most African illegal immigrants should be rounded up and either deported or arrested.

Speaking to Army Radio on Wednesday, Yishai (Shas) distinguished between those seeking asylum and those who came to Israel as opportunists, interested in taking advantage of Israeli  humanitarian benefits or engaging in crime.  All those involved in crime should be jailed, according to Yishai, and the majority of the remainder deported, except for those who are truly threatened in their countries of origin.  “One cannot forsake the security of Israelis,” Yishai said.  Under his plan, the deported would be provided financial assistance by Israel.

South Tel Aviv has become a center of African illegal immigrants, who primarily enter the country with the aid of Bedouins through Sinai.

MK Danny Danon (Likud) on Wednesday wrote on his Facebook page that he will take steps to remove the illegal immigrants from the country.  “I intend to hold a national emergency hearing on the issue of the illegal infiltrators. The current situation is intolerable! We should expel all the infiltrators before it’s too late,” he wrote.  Danon advocates evicting over 80% of illegal immigrants from Africa and Eastern Europe.

Haaretz published parts of a report on Tuesday in which Israel’s Foreign Ministry recommended investigating the possibility of deporting refugees whose lives would not be threatened by the measure.

MK Dov Hanin (Hadash) called Yishai comments “incitement and populism”.

There are between 700 and 2,000 South Sudanese illegals in Israel, according to estimates.

On June 3, the government will issue a response to the District Court for Administrative Matters in Jerusalem regarding Israel’s ability to withdraw protection from South Sudanese asylum seekers.

Journalist and Television host turned premier wannabe Yair Lapid’s party’s name, “Yesh Atid” (Hebrew for “There’s a Future”), was a last minute fix. After the party’s original name, “Atid” (“Future”), had been announced, it turned out that it had already been taken, several times, actually, and, judging by how those “Atid” parties performed in previous elections, the future of anyone using Future in their party name was murky at best. Hence the new, improved name.

Now a report by Israel’s Channel 2 News revealed that at least one man’s future will be secure in the new Yesh Atid movement: Founder and Chairman Yair Lapid. The new party rules clearly state that the chairman may not be removed from office until the year 2020.

The new rules do not explicitly name the party chairman, but, obviously, Lapid has been more glaringly synonymous with the new party than Comrades Stalin and Mao had been with theirs. So he’s the chairman, and he gets to stay the chairman until the end of the 2020 term – that’s at least two stints in a political system where most governments are terminated before their time, much as Benjamin Netanyahu’s current government has done.

Lapid was able to establish this and similar convenient rules because he also was the one to appoint his new party’s central committee.

The Lapid politburo includes his wife, his son, Yoav, and many of Yoav’s friends. Other comrades include Lapid’s loyal makeup artist Yael Drukman, his karate instructor, and musician Tamir Harpaz, who collaborated with Lapid on stage back in 2007. Prominent poet Ronny Somek was positioned in second place on the central committee’s list, and rumors are that this will also be his spot on the list for the Knesset.

Israel’s political system does not require that lists of candidates running for a Knesset seat must be chosen through a democratic process. But all the large factions rely on primaries, combined with privileged appointments which are determined by the various parties’ leadership. It is rare in Israel’s modern era for a large faction to be completely controlled by its leader.

But Yair Lapid has, apparently, learned well the lesson of his late father’s political woes. Yosef “Tommy” Lapid’s “Shinui” party won as many as 15 seats in the 2003 election, in third place behind Labor and Likud. But Shinui quickly imploded in 2006, when Lapid’s deputy failed to retain his spot on the list in a democratic primary and left, taking several key members with him.

None of that nonsense in Lapid Jr.’s new, secularist party which is staking a claim on that fickle and hard to define sliver of Israel’s voting public – the center.

Reminiscent of the US “independent” voters, Israel’s election politics has been generating (since the “Revolution” election of 1977 which ended Labor’s uninterrupted rule since 1948) new parties that appealed to the vast population between the Left and the Right, a population routinely tired of “politics as usual.”

The polls this week are predicting around 12 seats for the new party headed by Yair Lapid. Not so bad, considering there’s another, more established, “center” based party out there, Kadima, which is desperately fighting to hold on to its 28 seats in the Knesset. It won’t. As of now Kadima will sink to a mere 13 seats in September.

The new party platform was released yesterday, and here it is:

1. Changing the priorities State priorities, with an emphasis on civil life – education, housing, health, transportation and police, as well as improving the condition of the middle class. 2. Changing the system of government. 3. Equality in education and the draft: all school students must be taught essential classes (the 3 Rs, if you will), everybody will be drafted into the Army, and all the citizens will be encouraged to seek work, including the ultra-Orthodox and the Arabs. 4. War against corruption, including corruption in government in the form of institutions like “minister without portfolio,” opting for a government of 18 ministers at most, fortifying the rule of law and protecting the status of the High Court. 5. Growth and economic efficiency – creating growth engines as a way to fight poverty, combating red tape, removing barriers, improving the transportation system, reducing the cost of living and housing costs, and improving social mobility through assistance to small businesses. 6. Education legislation in cooperation with teachers’ unions, eliminating most of the matriculation exams, raising the differential education index, increasing school autonomy. 7. Enact a constitution to regulate tense relations between population groups in Israel. 8. Strive for peace according to an outline of “two states for two peoples,” while maintaining the large settlement blocs and ensuring the safety of Israel.

There have been numerous deriding comments in Israel’s political and Media environments ever since Lapid has announced, a few months ago, his intention to hang his TV host and journalist’s gloves and follow in his father’s footsteps. It should be noted that while his father made no bones of his deep loathing of religious Jews, and, indeed, made hatred of Orthodox Jewish conduct the foundation of his political success, Yair Lapid has been careful to come across as a benign, even friendly voice in the debates over Synagogue and State. Alas, that hasn’t fooled the frumies.

Interior minister and Shas MK Eli Yishai, in remarks at the Or David rabbinical institution the day after apologizing for comments attributing Israel’s failures in the Second Lebanon War to a lack of prayer among IDF soldiers, asserted that the Jewish people’s survival over two millenia was secured by adherence to the Torah.

“For thousands of years, even before the State’s establishment, each person was somewhere else in the world – without a country, without an army, without the Shin Bet, without anything,” Yishai said. “The Jewish people survived the 2,000 years since the Temple’s destruction to this day only thanks to the Torah, which protected the people of Israel. The people of Israel would not have existed without the Torah.”