Cracks Appearing In All Sorts Of Coalitions
June 29, 2012 § Leave a comment
Apparently Bibi Netanyahu’s strategy of expanding his governing coalition in an effort to deal with the crisis precipitated by the Tal Law’s expiration didn’t solve the problem but only kicked it down the road. Following the news that the Plesner Committee, which was charged with coming up with a viable plan to rectify the military and national service exemptions for Haredim and Israeli Arabs, has decided to essentially give Israeli Arabs a free pass, Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party quit the committee. The news that Haredim were going to be treated differently than Israeli Arabs obviously did not sit well with Shas and UTJ either, who were already upset that Shaul Mofaz and Kadima are insisting on severe penalties for draft dodgers that are squarely aimed at the Haredi sector. So in a nutshell, the two sides that were pulling on Netanyahu from opposite ends during the last coalition crisis are now both angry again, and this is all being driven by Kadima, Netanyahu’s new coalition partner that was supposed to give him room to maneuver and put an end to the constant worrying about the coalition breaking apart.
Netanyahu and Mofaz are meeting today in an effort to try and resolve the impasse after the prime minister made clear that he was not ok with the Plesner Committee plan (which is being pushed, if not outright dictated, by Mofaz), but this is just a reminder that Israeli coalitions are never fully stable no matter how large they are. This is not going to bring down the government, but if forced to choose between Mofaz and Kadima on the one hand and Lieberman and Yisrael Beiteinu on the other, Netanyahu is going to go with Mofaz, which will set off all sorts of problems with the settler community at the worst possible time for Bibi given that the Ulpana evacuation just went off shockingly smoothly.
Speaking of Ulpana, the events there this week revealed another important split, but this one has nothing to do with coalition politics. Instead, there seems to be a growing divide between the camp containing the majority of the settlement movement and the more extreme militant wing (often referred to by the shorthand “hilltop youth”), with some in the settler leadership waking up to the fact that violence turned outward almost always inevitably migrates inward as well. It began when Ze’ev Hever, who is in charge of the settlement movement’s building and construction, found his car tires slashed, prompting a set of mea culpas from him and from Yesha head Danny Dayan, who both admitted that they have stayed silent for years in the face of settler violence against Arabs. This acknowledgement and promise to begin cracking down on the violent extremists within their midst unfortunately came too late for the Defense Ministry subcontractors visiting Ulpana earlier this month in preparation for the evacuation who were pelted with rocks for their efforts to ensure that Ulpana’s residents would be moved out as painlessly and seamlessly as possible. Then if that weren’t enough, the Ulpana families – who were fully cooperative and left peacefully – had to spend their time skirmishing with hilltop youths who were trying to prevent those very families from evacuating by barring their way and then barricading themselves in one of the vacated apartments. If it wasn’t clear to the settler leadership that they have a serious problem within their midst while violent settler extremists were torching mosques and carrying out odious “price tag” attacks in the West Bank, it has become abundantly clear now. All of this is a useful reminder that, as Jeremy Pressman aptly put it yesterday, the term “settler” papers over the fact that settlers are not a monolithic group and the settlement movement is not a unified whole marching in lockstep. These divisions within Israeli politics and Israeli society bear close watching over the next few months as tensions that have been buried are now starting to bubble up to the surface.
This Is Why Rabbis Should Stick To Torah Rather Than Politics
May 15, 2012 § 1 Comment
A committee is being established to come up with an alternative to the Tal Law, and the deal that emerges will affect Israel’s Haredi community more than any other segment of society since it will determine what becomes of the system whereby Haredi Jews are granted exemptions from military service. So naturally, one would expect the Haredi parties to be intimately involved in coming up with new proposals and fighting tooth and nail to get as many seats on the committee as possible. Right?
In fact, the Tal Law committee is being boycotted by Shas and UTJ following rabbinical instructions to the parties’ MKs that they should not participate since the Haredi rabbinical leadership is ideologically opposed to compulsory military service for the members of its community. Shas head Eli Yishai, who was previously on record as being willing to consider alternatives to the Tal Law, changed his mind after meeting with Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and now says that he is against any negotiations or quotas and that the right of Haredim to study Torah should not be subject to debate. Instead, Shas is going to come up with its own plan for draft reform outside the auspices of the official committee, while UTJ has threatened to leave the coalition on the orders of its own rabbinical leadership should Haredi students be prevented from studying Torah all day.
Boycotts of politics never end well. All that happens is that politics proceeds apace, and the parties that choose not to participate do not get to air their grievances, promote their interests, or affect the results in any way. This is particularly true when the boycotters are not protesting the legitimacy of the political system itself, but rather a specific policy that they do not like. Shas and UTJ are not taking a stand against the Knesset’s legitimacy; they just think that the people they represent should be allowed a different set of rules than everyone else. Now, it is understandable that they think this way, since for decades they have indeed had a different set of rules that were endorsed by the Knesset, the courts, and the other organs of Israeli democracy. The corollary to this though is that if the old rules were deemed to be legitimate, then any new rules that emerge must be deemed legitimate as well.
It seems to me that the Haredi politicians understand this. Yishai seemed willing at first to be involved in crafting a compromise, and apostate Shas MK Haim Amsalem has blasted Shas for not participating in the committee. It is only on the orders of the various rabbis who comprise Shas and UTJ’s “spiritual leadership” that the two parties are now boycotting the committee rather than serving on it. This appears like a logical step to the rabbinic overseers, since like anything else that conflicts with their interpretation of halakha – immodestly dressed women, “secular” music, the internet, etc. – their approach is to ban any contact with it. In their view, the Tal Law committee is going to force Haredim to stop devoting all their time to learning Torah, and since they consider this to be unlawful from a religious standpoint, they will have nothing to do with it and have instructed their MKs accordingly. While the religious logic of this might make sense, the political logic does not. What is sure to happen now is that a compromise will be worked out that will not be to the Haredi parties’ liking, the Haredi community and its leaders will reject it as illegitimate, and Israel will have a new problem on its hands. I do not begrudge the Haredi parties their reliance on rabbis to influence their policy proposals. In a democracy, any party has the right to organize itself as it chooses, and this applies to religious parties just as equally as it applies to anyone else. The Shas and UTJ MKs, however, know enough to realize that religious expertise is not the same as political expertise, and when the rabbinical leadership begins to control tactical political decisions rather than broad policy preferences, it is going to lead to political disaster.
