Nostalgia Sunday – Arye Deri is back
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, News, Nostalgia Sunday, Politics, Pop Culture, Profiles, Religion
Arye Deri is making his long-awaited return to the political arena which makes this the perfect time for the following exercise. Say it together with me: “Prime Minister Arye Deri… Prime Minister Arye Deri”. Rolls nicely off the tongue, doesn’t it? I’m not saying I like this prognostication. I’m just saying, get used to it.
Of course, I’m not the first person to predict Deri’s future. That was done a long time ago when Deri first burst on the scene to take the reins of the Shas Party, becoming the youngest minister in the State’s history. Legend has it that party elders said, “That young man will either go to jail or become Prime Minister.”
Well, he’s done the jail part — convicted in 2000 of bribe-taking, served a jail sentence and lived under sanction from political activity — and now he’s back, still the darling of the secular population for his perceived ability to unite factions, and a divisive element among the religious for approximately the same reason.
And he’s about to do it again. There’s been some buzz about his running for mayor of Jerusalem where he recently made the local Time Out’s “50 Sexiest Jerusalemites” list, (though that may say more about Jerusalem than Deri).
In an interview with Maariv on Friday, Deri said that he was “working on establishing a new socio-economic party that would bridge between religious and secular, Right and Left, Ashkenazi and Sephardi and rich and poor.”
In previous go-rounds, he was able to capture a great many former Labor and Likud party voters, including voters from the Arab sector who appreciated the fairness he displayed as Minister of the Interior.
To mark the return of Deri, we’ve gone back to the archives of Yom HaShishi, a now-defunct weekly newspaper for the religious sector. Yom HaShishi made waves back in the 1990s for its bold use of photo-illustrated political cartoons on its covers — something that hadn’t been seen before. The artworks were executed by Jonathan Sierra of Icons, a studio that pioneered the use of Photoshop, photo-montage and multimedia in Israel.
Sierra notes that Yom HaShishi was very, very literal in its humor. So, if Deri’s was breaking bonds with Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, then that was shown.
And if Deri and fellow Shas party leader Shlmo Benizri were “tailoring a suit for someone” (the phrase also means, “to frame someone”), then they were shown tailoring a suit!
(Benizri is, by the way, currently serving a jail sentence also for taking bribes).
In the early nineties, the protracted investigation into Deri’s financial affairs and consequent trial had a profound effect on Israeli society. “Hu zakai” (“he is innocent” or “free from guilt”) became a famous pro-Deri catchphrase, particularly among Shas voters who saw the whole matter as the Israeli establishment’s persecution of their party, the religious sector and Sephardic Jews in general.
The topsy-turvy atmosphere of the day is reflected in this Purim holiday cartoon from 1993. According to Jewish tradition, on Purim, everything is upside-down. Therefore, Deri was shown as a policeman while Police Commissioner Yaakov Terner was shown in religious garb. Twirling a noisemaker in the background: Moshe Shahal, then Minister of Police.
At the time, Deri’s popularity was such that people said the harder you hit him, the stronger Shas became. Imagine, then, what he can do now with a broad-based party.
Let’s face it, Arye Deri is the only politician on the Israeli scene with genuine charisma. So do your exercises and get ready for what’s coming next.
Save summer hours
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, Politics, Religion
Not my kid, but you get the idea
The mornings have actually been getting better, as one of my almost-two-year-old twins is ‘sleeping in’ until 5:20, even 5:30. And I’ve figured out that breakfast — be it French toast, yogurt or eggs — needs to happen at 6, not later, in order to assuage the hunger pangs that hit them at the usual 7 am, now 6 am.
But while I did my part in signing the petition to keep summer hours until the end of October, I didn’t really boycott it. That would have meant missing an hour of mishpachton each day, and pretty much living in a bubble from the rest of my particular society. Local high-tech firms, however, are delaying moving their clocks back for the time being. According to an article in yesterday’s Ha’aretz, telecom firm 102 Smile is staying with summer hours until late October, as are venture capital firms IHCV and Walden Israel. Good on them, I say, although it’s gotta be a pain for their employees to live part of their life on summer hours, and the other part in winter hours.
Interior Minister and Shas politician Eli Yishai had a great reaction to the boycott, comical really. He feels the public debate over daylight savings time “targets the religious public”, given the reasoning for the change, which is make the upcoming Yom Kippur fast easier. I will be fasting, and trust me, I’d rather be fasting into the evening hours and not have to see darkness fall at 5:30 pm in September. He suggested changing the clock for the fast, and then bringing the summer clock back two weeks later.
Clearly Mr. Yishai has never been the one in his family dealing with the effect of the clock change on his own kids.
Let the children stay
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, Israeliness, Life, Politics
There hasn’t been a more sensitive issue on the Israeli table the last few months than that of children of foreign workers. Over 1,200 children of non-Israelis – mostly from Africa, who have been working in Israel for the last decade – are in danger of being deported by the government, despite the fact they were born here, speak Hebrew, and aside from the coveted identity card are as Israeli as anyone else.
The catch? They’re not Jewish.
This week, an interministerial committee was supposed to tackle the issue ahead of a November 1st deadline that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had set to come up with a solution to their plight. Their decision – to enable the children to remain in Israel through the end of the school year, and then we’ll see.
The campaign to deport the children is being led by Interior Minister Eli Yishai, the leader of the Shas party. He’s been adamant that the children of foreign workers not be given residency or citizenship in Israel in order to preserve the Jewish nature of the country.
According to Ha’aretz, Yishai does not object to Monday’s decision to postpone deporting the children and their parents until the end of the school year, saying this was for “humanitarian reasons.” But he stressed that he will not agree to any further postponements and will vehemently oppose granting the children citizenship or residency.
Allowing these children to stay in Israel “is liable to damage the state’s Jewish identity, constitute a demographic threat and increase the danger of assimilation,” he said, adding that he would give up his ministry if the government decides to let the children stay.
On behalf of all forward looking people in Israel, let me say that we look forward to the day that happens.
Minister for Minority Affairs Avishay Braverman, representing the humane side of Israeli society, said he couldn’t envision Israel resorting to deporting the children, who want to stay here, serve in the army and be productive members of society.
According to Ynet, he referred in a speech to a precedent established by prime minister Menachem Begin in 1977, where he granted Israeli citizenship to 179 Vietnamese refugees who escaped their homeland on boats after a regime change occurred in Vietnam. No country agreed to take the refugees in after being pulled out of the sea by an Israeli cargo ship.
“The State of Israel will be blemished should those 1,200 children not be accepted as Israeli citizens. It is humanitarianly the right thing to do. The issue must be solved and we are obligated to acknowledge them equal citizens of the State of Israel,” said Braverman.
It’s clear what the right thing to do here is. And if I need to risk the possibility that one of my children might one day want to marry an Israeli who isn’t Jewish, it’s a small price to pay.
Shas trying a bit of feminism
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Politics
The Shas party has had the upper hand on Tzipi Livni ever since the Kadima leader’s aspirations to take over from Olmert as prime minister were dashed by Shas’s coalition holdout tactics.
As a result, Livini and Kadima were forced to keep Olmert at the country’s helm, and the general elections scheduled for next week became a necessity. With Kadima trailing in the polls, one can’t resist wondering if Livni has been secretly regretting her decision to not kowtow to Shas back in the fall.
One of the most popular of the second-tier parties, the ultra-Orthodox Sephardi Shas party doesn’t stand a chance to elect a prime minister, but it always finds a way to obtain big cabinet appointments and budgets for its programs as coalition bargaining chips.
But until now, Livni has had one clear advantage over all of the other parties: the feminist card. No other major contending party in this race has a woman at the top of its list, which, as we know, can be a major draw.
And Shas can always use some good PR for believing in the leadership potential for women – especially given that the party’s spiritual figurehead, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, makes a habit of saying politically incorrect things. Shas has been “trying a bit of feminism” (as our friend Ali G puts it) ever since it launched a “Strengthening Women” platform in December.
This week, the party upped the feminist ante by allowing Rabbi Ovadia Yosef’s daughter-in-law (and flat-mate), Yehudit Yosef, to take on a more public role, Haaretz reports. Apparently, Yehudit Yosef has for years been a major playing behind the scenes with Shas, but this week, she began campaigning on behalf of the party, rallying supporters with an inspiring speech in Jerusalem on Monday:
“I know how concerned [Rabbi Ovadia Yosef] is about women’s issues, how he educated his children to take care of their womenfolk so that they would not lack for anything,” she said. “When he gives his class on Saturday night and comes to the issue of women, he gives them a lecture on how to treat a woman, what to do for her, how to behave, what to buy her, and so forth. It’s such a lovely thing.”
Will lip service like this woo away some potential Kadima voters? We’ll know next week.
Image courtesy tzipilivni2009 from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.
Yes we can? Really?
It all started when Likud leader Bibi Netanyahu completely ripped off Barack Obama’s website. And when I say completely, I mean completely. Not just the idea of integrating social media – but layout, graphics and color scheme as well. Purely shameless. That was just the beginning. Bibi, Ehud Barak, Tzipi Livni and even Shas (also using Obama’s “Yes we can” mantra) have twitter accounts. Some really have the campaigns behind them, others do not. We’ve also seen, for better or worse, the introduction of “Livni Boy” a blatant rip off of the enormously popular (and hot) Obama Girl as well as “Asulin Girl,” an even more blatant rip off of the original which promotes Sagiv Asulin, a young leader of Likud who used the video to garner support in the primaries and consequently will most likely make it to the Knesset. 
Apparently when it comes to political campaigning, originality is not a strength in the Holy land, though silliness is. At least Channel 2 is doing something that can potentially involve Israel Israeli (like Joe Sixpack but Israeli) in the political process. They’ve teamed up with YouTube and are asking for Israelis to submit questions that will actually be answered live on the air by all three party leaders who are vying for prime minister. CNN did something similar during the primaries and proved to be really, really bizarre and surreal at times. I am of course referring to an actual snowman asking a question about global warming. Not sure how any Israeli can top that or if Channel 2 would even be courageous to broadcast a camel asking about the receding Dead Sea.
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