It's not Yishai

What happened to Shas chairman Eli Yishai? Anyone following his career is now shocked by his right-wing and ultra-Orthodox turnaround. He seems to be leading the most conservative, ultra-nationalist and anti-liberal policy. Is this the shy and likable young man who 20 years ago crowded under Aryeh Deri's shadow with several other brilliant and energetic young men who were open to all worlds?

Alongside Yishai there were, among others, Petah Tikva's deputy mayor, attorney Sinai Gilboa, his assistant Yehuda Avidan (who since became an attorney as well) and Akiva Aton, a building contractor and computer specialist from Jerusalem. They represented a new and fascinating lifestyle in which education and enlightenment did not clash with religious beliefs, but lived in harmony with the traditional "Sephardi" (Mizrahi) world of Jews of North African or Middle Eastern origin.

They proved that it's possible to pray in the old neighborhood synagogue, run from there to work and university, stop to recite the afternoon prayer, work with Meretz and the Labor doves, support peace and kiss the hand of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, whose halakhic version of "territories for peace" was enthusiastically cited by leftist intellectuals.

The group scattered in all directions when Deri went to prison. Yishai alone survived in politics. His behavior at present - his insistence on denying citizenship to Arabs, his clearly hawkish worldview and especially his commitment to the settlers - arouse amazement. They also arouse a longing for the former Shas and Deri, the man who was invited in the middle of the night to consultations with then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who prevented the implementation of the government's militaristic ideas during the 1991 Gulf War, and who abolished censorship of films and plays.

But the depressing conservative-ultra-Orthodox upheaval that Yishai has experienced is not personal. It is the result of a deliberate socioeconomic measure. In the early 1980s, Shas voters came from the big cities' poor neighborhoods and the development towns, and were closer to the average secular-traditional Israeli than to the ultra-Orthodox.

In the settlements, which Menachem Begin promised to nurture and expand, lived Hanan Porat and his friends, Jews of European origin in knitted skullcaps. The average Shas supporter, who suffered from their racism in the state religious schools, felt alienated and excluded.

In the late 1970s, with the generous assistance of the ostensibly centrist party The Democratic Movement for Change (Dash), the Begin government decided to build as many settlements as possible. Along with an economic policy of privatization, which distributed handouts to the poor on a sectarian basis, and in effect began to destroy the welfare state, the Begin governments offered cheap housing and a comfortable life in the territories. The Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert governments expanded this process and clearly defined it as social-welfare oriented.

The outcome was a profound change in the concept of "settlement." Although the "classic" settlers are still dictating policy, the sons and grandsons of the first Shas supporters live in Givat Ze'ev, Neveh Yaakov, Beitar Illit and every other place where one can escape from the crowded and increasingly expensive life within the Green Line. In addition to improving their lives, the new location provided them with a better identity as pioneers. It is no coincidence that 10 years after this process began, Deri said that "the Shasnikim are the true Zionists."

Under the sponsorship of this sectarian identity, the Shas rabbis and preachers very easily promoted the return to religion and the process of becoming ultra-Orthodox. At the same time, the strengthening of the "Hardali" (ultra-orthodox national religious) stream in the national religious public swept up a Mizrahi public. They all met in the Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel's Tomb, and united against the "left" and the "Arabs."

The adoption of extremism by the settlement leadership as a result of the Gaza disengagement (which harmed mainly the poor who had improved their housing situation), dragged along the public that had recently joined. Now most Shas voters no longer go to the synagogue in the morning and to soccer games in the afternoon. They are active "settlers," or brothers, cousins or friends of "settlers." Their wives wear headscarves, their children are Lithuanian ultra-Orthodox for all intents and purposes, and they are all right-wingers.

This is the public Eli Yishai and his rabbi are addressing. They can do nothing else, because they don't want to be left without a party. Benjamin Netanyahu's government is reaping the fruits of the seeds sown by the Begin-Dash government. Meanwhile, the left, which allowed this policy to be conducted, does not understand what happened to Eli Yishai.