Israeli Scandal Spotlights Religious Party’s Two Sides

Last year during Passover, Likud Party candidate Benjamin Netanyahu stopped by the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City to say a prayer and woo religious voters in his bid to become prime minister.

Netanyahu won the election with the help of observant Jews and formed a coalition government with Orthodox parties such as Shas. But having just escaped indictment in a Shas influence-peddling scandal, Netanyahu may well spend this holiday recalling the adage “Be careful what you pray for.”

Shas has proved to be a double-edged sword for the Likud-led government, much as it was in the previous, Labor Party coalition. The mainstream parties apparently cannot form a government without Shas--now Israel’s third-largest party, with 10 seats in the 120-member Knesset, or parliament--but they find that ruling with Shas has its costs.

The current scandal centers on Shas leader Aryeh Deri’s alleged attempt to handpick an attorney general who would let him strike a deal in another corruption case--one that threatened the stability of Labor Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s government four years ago. The scandal jeopardized Netanyahu’s government for three months, until prosecutors decided Sunday not to charge the prime minister.

But while Netanyahu’s credibility has been severely tarnished by the “cloud of suspicion” that prosecutors say still hangs over his administration, the only man likely to be charged in the affair--Deri--may actually emerge from the crisis politically strengthened.

Deri leads a party of traditional and ultra-Orthodox Sephardic Jews of Middle Eastern and North African descent--low-income workers, housewives and religious students who feel locked out of a political system founded by secular, European-born Ashkenazi Jews.

Shas members distrust the Israeli media, mainstream parties, police and courts, which they feel represent the “arrogant” educated and professional classes. And they note disdainfully that while five men were under investigation--Netanyahu, Justice Minister Tzachi Hanegbi, Netanyahu aide Avigdor Lieberman, businessman David Appel and Deri--the “Ashkenazi elite” were let off and apparently only Deri will be charged. Here they see persecution.

“There are indications of prejudice here,” said Rabbi Daniel Biton, a neighbor of the 37-year-old Deri and head of the Orot Hatshuva yeshiva in Jerusalem. “Deri is a Sephardi. He is a young, successful Sephardi who has taken control of the party, and these are reasons why people want to get him.”

Tal Peretz, 20, a yeshiva student in the Har Nof neighborhood where Deri and Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef live, said: “The nonreligious want an ultra-Orthodox scapegoat. That’s why they are ganging up on Deri.”

Deri is on trial for allegedly funneling about $250,000 in government funds to his party coffers and religious groups affiliated with Shas while serving as interior minister in the Labor-led coalition.

Shas Party faithful largely dismiss these charges too as the establishment ganging up on Deri. They either do not believe the allegations or do not see anything wrong with what Deri might have done, experts on the religious parties say.

“It is very simple. You have to look at who he may have stolen from--the government, which belongs to Ashkenazi elites,” said Menachem Friedman, a sociologist at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv.

“They do not think he has to be punished. . . . They think he may have used his power to give back to the people some of what was robbed from them in the past,” Friedman said.

More than as a Robin Hood, however, Shas followers, Friedman believes, see Deri as an underdog put on trial by an unjust establishment.

The allegation at the core of the current scandal is that Netanyahu appointed Jerusalem lawyer Roni Bar-On as attorney general in January under pressure from Deri, who expected Bar-On to then help him obtain a plea bargain in the corruption trial.

Bar-On resigned within a day amid widespread criticism that he was unqualified for the top prosecutor’s job. But police launched an investigation after Israeli television reported that Netanyahu had agreed to appoint Bar-On because of threats from Deri that Shas would otherwise oppose a crucial deal with the Palestinians to withdraw Israeli troops from the West Bank city of Hebron.

Police recommended that charges be brought against Netanyahu, Deri and the others. In the Shas weekly newspaper Yom Leyom, party leaders portrayed this as a conspiracy by the media and police to smear Shas’ image and destroy the party.

“This is the goal of elements who envy Shas for its success,” the paper quoted Rabbi Shlomo Benizri, a Shas member of parliament and deputy minister of health, as saying. “The more we are attacked and slandered, the more powerful we grow.”

This seems to have been the case. Shas established itself in national politics in 1984 by winning four seats in the Knesset. Four years later, the party won six seats and, in 1992, with corruption allegations already surfacing against Deri along with embezzlement charges against party member Yair Levy, the party retained its strength.

Last year, with Deri in court and Levy in prison, Shas increased its share of the vote to 10 seats.

Now Elyakim Rubinstein, the current attorney general, has said that Netanyahu and Hanegbi will not be charged in the “Bar-On affair” due to lack of evidence but that Deri will be indicted for extortion, fraud and obstruction of justice pending a court hearing. Lieberman and Appel, a contractor close to Netanyahu, are still under investigation.

After the announcement, Shas faithful gathered outside the homes of Deri and Rabbi Yosef in support. Some political analysts suggested that Shas might withdraw its support from the government and seek early elections, hoping to increase its vote amid the allegations.

“Whenever Deri confronts the system, he gets automatic support from his people,” said Shlomo Ben-Ami, a Labor member of parliament and a Sephardic Jew.

In fact, the Bar-On crisis seems to have strengthened the alliance between Netanyahu and Shas. The prime minister and the religious party are sounding the same themes, attacking the media and Labor Party, the “old elites” who they say cannot accept that a new right-wing government is in power.

Netanyahu, who still needs Shas support in parliament to stay in power, called Deri after the attorney general’s announcement Sunday to tell him to keep the faith.

Political analysts say that, in many ways, Shas is the ideal coalition partner for a mainstream party. Its members are flexible on issues of peace, security and the national economy--which allows them to make coalitions with both Labor and Likud--while focused on their relatively modest demands.

Shas wants ultra-Orthodox religious schools, in which teachings are based exclusively on the Torah and Jewish law. The party wants housing and better services for its low-income constituents, and a traditional Jewish way of life for Israel rather than secular values and Americanization.

Shas leaders do not seek to take over the government or make constitutional changes, like fundamentalist religious parties in the region, but they pursue their goals “without worrying about legal niceties,” said Tel Aviv University anthropologist Shlomo Deshen.

The party heads have been successful at the game of modern politics. “But they look at democracy as a means, not an end,” said Friedman of Bar Ilan University. “It is a means to revive Jewish tradition, not a value in itself. They understand democratic society gave them an opportunity but do not value that society or its values.”

That is the paradox for parties such as Labor and Likud, which need Shas to form a democratic government.

“Because our political system is structured on a kaleidoscopic society, we never have a homogenous majority,” said Ben-Ami of the Labor Party. “We all the time have to accept compromises. To get support for the peace process, for example, we have to pay in terms of democratic values. Neither Labor nor Likud is immune from this contradiction.”

Yael Rotter of The Times’ Jerusalem Bureau contributed to this report.