The Shas political party, founded and run by the late Rav Ovadia Yosef, has a appointed a new spiritual leader, according to a Galei Tzahal report.

The rabbi chosen to replace Harav Ovadia and be the new president of the party’s Council of Torah Sages is Rabbi Shalom Cohen.

Aryeh Deri is the political leader of the party. Deri displaced Eli Yishai, who was interim leader for the years that Deri was in jail, and until he was allowed to return to politics.

MK Eli Yishai, the former head of the Shas party has decided he will not be running for mayor of Jerusalem, according to a report in the Israeli, Chareidi La’Daat website.

Yishai was the political head of the Shas party until Shas’s spiritual leader, Rav Ovadia Yosef, kicked him out and replaced him with Aryeh Deri. Following the completion of Aryeh Deri’s prison sentence, Deri had a cooling-off period before he could return to the politics.

Upon Deri’s going to prison, Yishai replaced Deri for 13 years, during which time Yishai ran Shas as a responsible and effective political party.

Associates of Yishai said that he had been considering challenging incumbant mayor Nir Barkat for the position in the upcoming race, but in the end Yishai has decided he wants to remain working in the national politics, and still within the Shas party.

As the Minister of the Interior in former governments, Yishai earned the reputation of being an honest person and a politician who did his job well.

Currently no candidates have announced their decision to challenge Nir Barkat for position of mayor of Jerusalem.

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.

.

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.