Last update - 15:21 13/03/2008
Democracy, according to Shas
By Avner Bernheimer
In the last few years, I've declined to react to the nonsense spewed by various Shas representatives regarding matters of current interest. Shas is a party that missed its historic opportunity to be important and to improve the standing of Mizrahi Jews. Its leaders are selected for their powers of rhetoric and sex appeal, which sometimes earns them the affection of certain liberal Ashkenazi media types, who quickly develop paternal and patronizing feelings for them.
I'll admit that I, too, once felt some ambivalence toward them for, having experienced years of discrimination and neglect, I could identify with their social struggle. But I was repulsed by their tendency to belittle the rights of anyone who didn't toe the line of the Shas ideology as propounded by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. Nothing disgusts me more than one oppressed public that's willing to trample all over another oppressed public. Just as I'm disgusted by Arab-hating gays who support the occupation, or Palestinians who oppose equal rights for women.
In the 1990s, I was always one of the first to respond angrily to every racist statement made by someone from Shas. In time, I came to see that I was playing into their hands and even helping them nurture their faithful public - hard-working people, for the most part, whose feelings of being oppressed were fertile ground in which to plant more and more hatred of the sort that translates into electoral power and budgets for funding a wide array of party institutions. So in the last few years, I decided to stop reacting, thinking that this was exactly what they were looking for: a media fuss that would signal to their voters that the party is doing battle for them against the forces of evil.
Shlomo Benizri will get a lot more media attention by claiming that homosexual relations cause earthquakes than by working hard to improve his voters' socioeconomic situation. So why should he work hard if one statement of this kind is enough to bring in a load of contributions to the party institutions? The man heads an industry that, like the Church, exploits people's distress in order to enrich its coffers.
The reason I decided to deviate from my practice and to respond this time stems from legislation involving the screening of Internet sites that has passed its first reading in the Knesset. Submitted by MK Amnon Cohen of Shas, the bill will not prevent Internet access to those who desire hard-core pornography, but it will definitely give the communications minister, who at the moment also happens to be from Shas, the power to order Web providers to make accessing such content more difficult. Essentially, our noble legislators are saying that Israel's citizens are not sufficiently responsible to decide for themselves what content will enter their homes and what will not.
Of course, this isn't the first anti-democratic law Shas has sought to pass. MK Nissim Zeev, a wise and intelligent man, who claims that "in their next incarnation, gays will be rabbits," proposed a bill prohibiting abortions after the 22nd week of pregnancy that would effectively deny women the right to make decisions about their bodies. An amendment to the Jerusalem Law, proposed in the wake of the Gay Pride parade, is supposed to prevent the holding of parades and demonstrations in the capital. And, in honor of the upcoming 60th Independence Day celebrations, Minister Eli Yishai is working to secure the release of Jews who murdered Arabs. It's a wonder they don't just come up with a new law for this, too.
I don't take the statements by Shas people lightly, no matter how ridiculous they may sound. Because this is incitement. MK Zeev's remark that "the plague of homosexuality should be dealt with the same way as bird flu," is a call to murder. Shas' venerable leader, Rabbi Yosef, the same man who claimed that Israel Defense Forces soldiers were being killed because they don't observe the religious commandments, and that "the six million that were killed in the Holocaust are the reincarnations of people who sinned in the previous incarnation," once ordered a virtual "hit" on Yossi Sarid when he said he "should be wiped out like Amalek." And Sarid isn't the only one. Over the years, Rabbi Yosef has attacked the legal system in Israel and continually targeted all manner of people in sensitive positions, such as former state comptroller Miriam Ben-Porat, whom he called "an enemy of Israel," or former attorney general Yosef Harish, about whom he wished, "May his house be destroyed." Nonetheless, as far as I'm concerned, such hateful gobbledygook from Shas people is still protected by my faith in freedom of speech and by the public's common sense. The attempt to pass anti-democratic laws, however, is immeasurably worse.
Even if we put aside motives behind coalition negotiations, I cannot understand why some secular MKs are also being so light on the trigger in regard to the Internet filtering bill. Even the most devout viewers of the various types of sex sites do not wish their children to be exposed to this at too young an age. The problem is that there's no end to it. Even if we disregard the fact that there is much vital information about sexual topics to be found on the Internet, and without getting into a debate about lazy parents who want the legislature to bring up their children, or into a more serious discussion in praise of fantasies - it's obvious that there's no end to the things various populations would want to censor. As a secular citizen, I might seek to filter out Internet sites about religious subjects that I find messianic, because I don't want my children to be exposed to that sort of lifestyle. As a vegetarian, I might seek to filter out sites related to meat, and as a Jew two generations removed from the Holocaust, I might wish to block any site that mentions Germany in a positive context.
A Google search in Hebrew of "Shas," "Rabbi Ovadia Yosef" and "Aryeh Deri" brought up on my computer screen countless examples of despicable utterances, stupidity, crime, corruption and ignorance. I wouldn't want my children to lose faith in the legislature before they reach voting age, nor do I want them to think that Judaism is a collection of the rubbish that comes out of the mouths of senior Shas representatives: earthquakes because of homosexual relations, natural disasters in the United States because of support for the disengagement, or gems like this one from Rabbi Ovadia Yosef: "Walking between two women is like walking between two donkeys or between two camels."
Anyone who decides to legally bar an Internet search for the word zayin (slang for penis), which would incidentally would also lead to the deletion of a letter from the Hebrew alphabet, will eventually have to accede blocking many other words, names and terms - like El Hama'ayan (the Shas school system), Shaul Yahaom, David Yifrah, Shas and Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. I don't think I'm alone in feeling this way, though I can't be sure: Dana Olmert, the prime minister's daughter, and her female partner are raising a baby together, but not a peep was heard from Grandpa when Attorney General Meni Mazuz ruled that gays and lesbians are entitled to adopt and Shas termed the decision "sickening."