Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, the chief rabbi of Tsfat and one of the most prominent rabbis affiliated with the Jewish Home party, called on party chairman Naftali Bennett to make an effort to add United Torah Judaism to the new coalition government, and leave Shas out.

In an editorial published this weekend in the Olam Katan shul freebee, Rabbi Eliyahu describes his visits over the past month to the homes of Hasidic leaders and prominent Haredi rabbis, to try and form a joint alliance between the religious Jewish parties.

“I sat down with members of the Knesset various factions, discussing unity. To this end, I asked them if they could commit in the name of Shas and Aryeh Deri not betray the alliance. No one could commit in the name of Aryeh Deri, no Rebbe and no MK, not even Shas’ own MKs,” Rabbi Eliyahu wrote.

He explained that he “would love to ally with the Haredim, but I don’t want to be fooled by such an alliance.” He added: “You can’t fault Naftali Bennett for refusing to seek with eyes closed shut such an entirely fraudulent deal.”

Nevertheless, However, Rabbi Eliyahu argued that “we should today form an alliance with Agudat Israel. They are our flesh and blood brothers. Even if they do not all serve in the army and if we’ve had occasional complaints against them in the past, they are our brothers. They are close to us about the issues of the Land of Israel, Shabbat, Chastity and the importance of Torah study. They are no less our brothers than anyone else.”

The chief rabbi of Tsfat argued in favor of finding a solution to the issue of army enlistment, but urged doing this through a “pact with Agudat Israel and not through coercion. We need to find a way to incorporate them in the agreement Jewish Home has with Yesh Atid. We can’t leave them out.”

“We have to cry out loud: We are not against the Haredim. We are only against those who sold us out in the Oslo Accords. We need to explain that not all the Haredim are the same. We should embrace warmly the Agudat Israel faction and bring it into the government,” he said.

Jewish Home Chairman Naftali Bennett issued a message of reassurance to the Haredi public, promising that even if the next government is established without the Haredi parties Shas and UTJ, he would take care of his Haredi brothers.

In a video message uploaded to You Tube late Wednesday night, Bennett, standing outside his home in Ra’anana, emphasizes that there is no truth to the claims that his party is boycotting Haredim and seeking to destroy the Torah world. He insisted the Jewish Home party will achieve the necessary changes through dialogue rather than with force.

“I don’t know how the next government will be composed, with or without Haredi parties,” he said, “it’s totally irrelevant. The state of Israel, all of us, are obligated to support the entire nation of Israel.”

“We will not uproot Torah scholars from their learning, and we will not send the military police to Meah She’arim or to B’nei B’rak,” Bennett said.

“I want to help calm the existing rate of anxiety, because in the end we’re brothers, thank you very much,” Bennett concluded.

Bennett’s message came in response to intensifying talk within the Haredi media—radios and newspapers—about boycotting settlements in retaliation for Jewish Home’s alliance with Yair Lapid’s leftist, Yesh Atid party and the efforts—public or otherwise—to keep the Haredim out of positions of power, at least until after a new “equal burden” law is passed, regulating the military enlistment of yeshiva students.

At last, the Likud-Beitenu coalition negotiations team has pulled the biggest rabbit out of its hat, exposing in the process that on the two-state solution there’s no daylight between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and super-leftist Meretz Chairwoman Zehava Gal-On.

As Yesh Atid negotiators have told the daily Makor Rishon, the Likud-Beitenu team threatened them on Thursday that their political pact with Habayit Hayehudi will end up thwarting the possibility of dismantling Judea and Samaria settlement as part of a future agreement on a Palestinian state.

According to Yair Lapid’s representative at the coalition talks, two Likud reps told them on Thursday: “We’re going towards tough decisions. If you don’t break up your pact with Bennett, we won’t be able to uproot settlements should there be a need for tough decisions. Together – we could do it.”

Makor Rishon noted that a similar statement was attributed to Prime Minister Netanyahu himself during his chat with Yair Lapid immediately after the elections, but it was later denied. Yesterday, Lapid’s people stated unequivocally that they’d heard that same, explicit argument from the Likud-Beitenu team.

Meanwhile, on Thursday the Likud negotiators have enhanced their efforts to bring the Haredi parties into the government, as a means of pressuring the Jewish Home team.

If you detect a note of hysteria in the Likud’s scrambling efforts to cobble together a government, you are not mistaken. On Saturday, Netanyahu is expected to ask President Peres for a two-week extension to be able to continue his efforts, and the White House has not been helping to alleviate the pressure by leaking that President Obama would be staying home to improve his golf game if a new government is not at hand before his visit to the Holy Land.

Naturally, this bodes very well for the Lapid-Bennett team, whose cue at this point is simply to stay the course, don’t flinch, and Netanyahu would have to capitulate.

Better him than the settlements.

President Barack Obama will cancel his scheduled March 20 visit to Israel if Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu does not from a coalition government before then, Israel’s Channel 10 television reported Thursday night.

It based its report on unnamed sources, but it makes sense because President Obama would have little to do in Israel except to bask in the sun at the Dead Sea if there is no government.

If Netanyahu fails to complete his coalition puzzle, Obama privately might gloat, considering the Prime Minister’s blatant grandstanding for Republican president candidate Mitt Romney in the recent US election campaign.

Netanyahu’s first deadline for forming a coalition is this Saturday night. If he still is empty handed, President Shimon Peres can grant him a final one-time only 14-day extension. That brings him up to March 16, four days before President Obama is scheduled to arrive.

If there is no government by then, Peres can throw the ball in the court of Yair Lapid, whose Future (Yesh Atid) party won the second largest number of Knesset seats, or simply call new elections.

Either prospect is unlikely, but anything is possible in Israeli politics.

The Obama administration figured a March 20 arrival date would give  the Prime Minister more than enough time to get his political act together. So far, it has been dead wrong.

Netanyahu tried throwing a curve ball at all of the parties dickering for Cabinet positions or acceptance of their principles. Instead of closing a deal with one of the largest parties first, he took in the hapless Tzipi Livni and her party of a total of six Knesset Members. Livni vowed in the election campaign she would not sit in a government with Netanyahu, but she caved into the offer of  being Justice Minister and de facto “Minister of the Peace Process.”

The curve ball turned into a boomerang.

If he thought his ploy would scare the other parties to fall into line, he was wrong. He had not yet understood that Lapid and Naftali Bennett, chairman of the Jewish Home party, really meant what they said and will not sacrifice their platforms and promises for a fancy Cabinet portfolio.

Netanyahu messed himself up by putting Livni in charge of the peace process, because Bennett told him “no way.” Without Bennett and Lapid, Netanyahu is up the creek, because he cannot form a majority only with Livni, the Haredi parties and the two-seat Kadima party. Labor party’s chair Shelly Yechimovich also has principles, the main one being not to join a Netanyahu-led government

Netanyahu has squeezed himself into a tight corner. Lapid’s chief negotiator David Shimron made it clear Thursday night that there is  no room in a coalition government for the Future party with Haredim.

If the Prime Minister wants to show Obama who’s in charge in Israel, he has no choice but to admit that Bennett and Lapid are in charge.

In debates with their Haredi peers, national-religious youths will often be heard to demand why the Haredim do not respect national-religious rabbis. “What about our great Torah scholars!”

But why should the Haredim respect national-religious rabbis if those rabbis’ own community does not?

A letter released this week by deputy mayors belonging to the Jewish Home in the most public way possible—it was published on all the usual sites, including Haredi ones—asks the parties’ rabbis not to interfere with political decisions made by the party’s negotiating team or by the party’s Knesset members, even on the topic of yeshiva students’ military service.

Would a Haredi ever release such a letter?

The settlement movement, it is important to remember, was not the work of professionals and businessmen. It was the work of national-religious rabbis holding discussions at the home of Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook through the wee hours of the morning. Hanan Porat and Yehuda Hazani are no longer with us, but we still have rabbis: Moshe Levinger—we’ll return to him—Yaakov Levin, Yaakov Novick, Yohanan Fried, Yoel Bin Nun, Menachem Felix. We still have great Torah scholars: Benny Katzover, Yehuda Etzion, Mati Dan, David Be’eri (of Ir David), Ze’ev “Zambish” Hever (of Amana). All of them participated in creating the settlement enterprise from their book stands at their respective yeshivot. That is what gave rise to the settlement revolution. The revolution in national-religious education, for that matter, was likewise the work of wise and devout rabbis, including Hayim Drukman, Dov Lior, Eliezer Melamed, and others.

And now they come and tell us that when it comes to truly important questions of morality and policy, decisions are to be made without the rabbis. Period.

How are they going to distinguish between what is permissible in politics and what is forbidden? How are they going to strike a balance between what is desirable and what is presently available? No problem. That’s the job of the new halakhic decision-makers: the “professionals.”

True, they never imbibed the Torah as did those rabbis, who for their entire lives have dedicated themselves to the Torah (in the vernacular: they put their heart and soul into it day and night. No movies. No Shlomo Artzi concerts). But apparently it makes no difference. Apparently the Torah does not rub off on its students. Apparently it is not in any way reflected in how they live their lives …

It’s all very strange to me. The Haredim, who regard the State of Israel as an entirely secular phenomenon lacking any and all sanctity, consult their rabbis about such matters. Yet the national-religious community—the community that burst forth into the world of national practicalities and leadership with the message that the State of Israel is the beginning of the redemption, that our country is God’s throne, that the politics of Israel is the politics of holiness—sends the rabbis home, the better to leave decisions to politicians and interested parties.

In a recent emergency meeting of Haredi rabbis in Bnei Brak, I saw precisely the opposite. The Knesset members stood at the rear with modesty and obvious veneration. They maybe even have been posing a little. But one way or another, it was moving. Respect for the Torah. A RECENT conversation with a young national-religious activist made clear to me that this is a deep-seated phenomenon among the younger generation. He sees the change as a positive development. “The rabbis don’t understand politics. Let them leave it to professionals.”

It’s not that he doesn’t respect the rabbis. He just leaves them out of the equation. In a debate with a Haredi he would go straight for the line about “our great Torah scholars,” but deep down he doesn’t in fact believe that Torah study improves a person.

Like him, I am not a Torah scholar. So why do I see things so differently? Is it just a matter of age?

Many of today’s young religious people have grown up in a culture that is more in touch with the media and secular literature than with rabbis, and may even be hostile to the latter. In an effort not to be different from the other guys on reserve duty, they run away from their rabbis. Is it realistic to demand they respect rabbis when their role models are businessmen and their commanders in the army? I received my initial education about respecting rabbis from my late father, an Auschwitz survivor. Once he took me to see the rebbe of Gur. Abba stood opposite the rebbe wearing a belt that one of the Hassidim had given him (“You go in to see the rebbe wearing a gartel”)—and burst into tears. The rebbe asked why he was crying. And my father answered: “Excitement.” I was nine years old, but I remember it as if it had happened yesterday.

There’s a phenomena I’ve noticed in both Israeli Knesset Elections and in our local elections for the Mazkirut (sort of town council) here in Shiloh.  The less known the candidate the more votes he or she gets.  I guess it’s because those people haven’t yet made enemies and their weaknesses are still unknown.  In the forty plus years I’ve been living in Israel, I’ve seen so many political parties and “leaders” come and go.

Many people, including a substantial number of English-speaking immigrants, regarded you as a breath of fresh air in Israeli politics. You promised to bridge the gap between all sectors of the population. You promised to honor the Torah and the world of Torah learning. You promised to strengthen the Jewish settlement in every corner of our beloved homeland….

Naftali Bennett is a wealthy man, having made his fortune by selling an innovative high tech company, the dream of many.  Many people had hoped that he’d be the dati le’umi (national religious) version of Jerusalem’s very competent and successful Nir Barkat.  But Bennett has been increasingly disappointing his voters. Arutz 7 has an op-ed/blog by Rabbi Lazer Brody that expresses the disappointment many of Bennett’s voters feel.

Naftali, where are those values in your pact with Yair Lapid? Why have you taken the cheap populist stance of drafting the Haredim, as if thousands of them aren’t already serving today? Why are you strengthening Lapid’s hand in limiting deferments to 2,000 Torah learners? … You could have been the individual that forced the IDF to be more sensitive to the needs of Haredi soldiers. You could have been the one who tripled the size of the Nahal Haredi and the IAF programs for Haredi hi-tech specialists. You could have been the one to make sure that a soldier doesn’t get kicked out of officer’s school for refusing to listen to women singing, or other ridiculous anti-religious excuses. You could also have been the hero that puts an end to the deligitimization of the holy Yeshivot and those who truly learn Torah… Naftali, talk is cheap; your “unbreachable pact” with Lapid shows exactly who you really are. We all make mistakes. We can all correct them, too. I urge you, for the sake of Torah and Eretz Yisrael, to reassess your position…  I implore you to rethink your position. Go out to the field and talk to Hashem for an hour – ask Him if you are doing His will. Seek His help and He’ll be glad to guide you. If you make your “unbreachable pact” with Hashem, you’re bound to succeed…

As my regular readers know well, I’m not an NRP-a.k.a. Bayit Yehudi voter and never was.  The main reason is that I don’t think a political parties should be rooted, labeled as religious or secular.  I prefer an inclusively Israeli-Jewish political party that recognizes the importance and centrality of Judaism to the State of Israel.

The stodgy old NRP-National Religious Party has been around since before the establishment of the State of Israel.  It had been loosing support over the past couple of decades.  The NRP has been looking for an attractive marketable head to bring it back to “its former glory.”  Bennett has been flitting around the Israeli political scene ever since he came back from his great financial success in the USA.  It had looked like a good match, and Bennett also seemed to be coated with teflon.  He had no big problem wiping away the complaints about himself.

His short time with Moetzet YESHA was easy to blame on Moetzet YESHA, and his departure from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s inner circle was even easier to blame on Sara Netanyahu.

Now, the NRP is getting nervous.  They should have looked more carefully before signing the Ketuba, marriage contract with Bennett.  Who are the two people closest to Bennett?  From what I have read, they are Bennett’s wife and his long-time sidekick Ayelet Shaked, who joined him as the token secular in the NRP.  Both of those women are secular.  In the Israeli political/ideological scene that puts them and therefore him in a very different mindset from your NRP-Bnai Akiva circle.

Just think about it…

P.S. This isn’t lashon haraa, evil speech.  Nothing I’ve written is secret, and these sorts of observations are permitted when it comes to public figures who are vying for national leadership.

Police are investigating suspicions that veteran national religious Knesset Member Nissan Slomiansky bought thousands of votes in the Jewish Home party primaries last November, enabling him to win the second most votes of any candidate.

Police are examining the information to determine whether to open a criminal investigation, which could torpedo Slomiansky’s chances of being appointed to a Cabinet position. Bennett is known to prefer Ori Orbach for minister.

Even Zevulun Orlev, the eternal Mafdal MK and one of the craftiest of politicians, lost out to Naftali Bennett in the race for party leader. In the primaries, Slomiansky won more than half of all the votes cast in the primaries although chairman Naftali Bennett did not back him.

Bennett was suspicious of the Slomiansky’s huge victory and hired a private detective, who taped a conversation in which voting contractor Avichai Amrusi bragged that that during the party’s membership campaign, Slomiansky paid out more than $30,000. He said some of the cash was stuffed in cigarette packets.

However, Amrusi has denied making the statements and has changed his version, while Slomiansky vehemently rejects any involvement in illegal vote-buying. He told Channel 2, which broke the story, “Rumors that I bought votes in the primaries are a hallucination. I have been in politics for 21 years, including nine years in the Knesset, and have never been accused of anything wrong. Even the person spreading the rumors denies them.”

He explained that the campaign against him is to keep him from being appointed to a Cabinet position, assuming the Jewish Home party joins the coalition.

A full 51 percent of the public want a coalition government composed of Likud-Beitenu (31 MKs), Yesh Atid (19), Habayit Hayehudi (12), Tzipi Livni’s The Movement (6) and Kadima (2), according to a new Ma’agar Hamochot survey presented on Monday on a Channel 10 program.

According to the survey, only 35% of the public support letting the Haredi parties join the new government in place of Yair Lapid’s party.

A full 76% do not want new elections and prefer the new government be established based on the current Knesset’s makeup.

44% of respondents said they would rather the party they voted for compromise on principles, in order to join the coalition. Only 33% prefer that their party stick to its principles, even at the cost of sitting in the opposition.

And then there are 23% who want their party to maintain its principles, and also join the government. Talk about eating your cake and staying trim, too.

MK Ayelet Shaked (Jewish Home), appearing on the same Channel 10 show, revealed that “more serious talks” are being conducted between Likud-Beitenu and her party. “If Netanyahu wants he can form a stable government with a Jewish home,” she said, but cautioned that “the Kendall outline is not a real solution” to the “equal burden” issue.

According to Haredi and Likud-Beitenu sources, Professor Eugene Kendall has proposed a solution to Haredi conscription which would make it easier for Haredi youths to enter IDF service. The proposal has not been published anywhere, but there is reported to be a wide gap between it and the Lapid proposal.

“We are working with Yesh Atid on an agreed equal burden solution,” Shaked told Channel 10.

“If Netanyahu wants to make a change, can lead the way together with Jewish home, Yesh Atid and The Movement,” Shaked concluded, emphatically ignoring the Haredi parties. “We and Yesh Atid agree on almost 100% of the socioeconomic issues, and disagree on the political issue.”

By “the political issue,” Shaked referred to the peace process, conveniently ignoring the fact that both Tzipi Livni and Yair Lapid advocate the transfer of some 100,000 Jews living on the wrong side of the security fence in Judea and Samaria.