About two weeks ago the Chairman of Shinui, Tommy Lapid, was
given a "note in his file" by the Knesset's Ethics Committee
because of incitement against chareidim. However, if anybody
thought that this step would encourage him to change his ways
or at least tone down his level of incitement, they were
mistaken. Kishmo ken hu and the flame (lapid)
of incitement continues unabated.
Tommy Lapid has been having a major problem recently: the
Kulturkampf issue, the raison d'etre of his party, has not
been high on the public agenda. The State of Israel is in a
state of war, terror is rampant, a minister is assassinated,
the IDF enters Palestinian Authority-controlled territory,
then goes out and in again and so forth. Terrorists are being
liquidated, the Americans are running wild, the whole world
is in turmoil, and nobody has any patience left for Tommy's
nonsense.
But Lapid has no other topic to boast of in his party's
platform and so he is still trying to make the headlines by
selling his insipid wares, he just cannot control himself. No
one can compete with his low standards: they are the lowest
of the low.
Last Monday, when everybody's attention was focused on
Israel's war with the Palestinians, Lapid considered it
appropriate to demand the immediate resignation of the
Transport Minister, Efraim Sneh.
Anyone reading the headline of Lapid's announcement to the
press would have been convinced that Sneh had committed some
heinous deed warranting this demand for his dismissal. One
thing seemed certain: it was impossible that Lapid could have
demanded the resignation of the Transport Minister for any
simple matter.
However, a perusal of the announcement proved that Lapid is
just a miserable wretch. The incident which had incurred his
wrath was the permit Sneh had given a Swissair airplane to
change its route so that the Rebbe of Toldos Aharon, HaRav
Dovid Kahn who is a kohen, would not have to fly over
the Cholon cemetery which is under the route followed by all
planes taking off from Ben Gurion.
Lapid claimed in his announcement that if ministers change
governmental arrangements to appease rabbis "there will come
a day when the Transport Minister will instruct all the
pilots of Swissair to become circumcised before any Admor
boards one of their planes."
First of all Lapid, you can relax. If a Swissair pilot is
Jewish, he will be circumcised whether you like it or not,
and the Transport Minister will not have to intervene in the
matter.
Second, the chareidi public will undoubtedly be delighted if
you continue to make such strange and shallow announcements
to the press. That way everyone in the media will realize
that they are dealing with a person obsessed with one topic
for which he is willing to degrade himself and lower
political standards to the level of the gutter. This is an
old man who got into politics by mistake on the back of an
ephemeral wave, who is in need of treatment of a kind which
the Knesset doctor cannot offer.
Opposition Now
Last Monday Ariel Sharon was sitting at the head of the Likud
faction in the Knesset. He was in a relaxed mood. Replying to
journalists' questions he declared that there was no pressure
from the Americans to withdraw from areas A, although he
admitted that they obviously were not in agreement with
Israel's actions in Palestinian Authority-controlled
areas.
Sharon's statement was correct at the time. The problem was
that he did not take his Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, into
account, who was in the United States at the time. Several
hours after Sharon's statement Israel received an ultimatum
from the Americans: President George Bush demanded Israel's
immediate withdrawal from areas A and insisted that its
troops not return there in the future. Many people on the
right are willing to swear that Shimon Peres was behind this
American ultimatum.
At the same time that the Likud faction meeting was taking
place, the Labor party was also having a meeting to decide on
the party's red lines for continuing to remain in the
government. The supporters and opponents of remaining in the
government were clearly divided. The Ministers, who have
plenty to lose, namely power and authority, were staunchly
opposed to leaving the government. This was the view of
Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, and he was joined by
Matan Vilnai, Shalom Simchon and Efraim Sneh. Deputy Minister
Eli Ben Menachem also expressed his opposition to leaving the
government.
Ordinary MKs, on the other hand, and especially people such
as Shlomo Ben Ami, Chaim Ramon, and Beige Shochat, who
consider themselves party members no less senior than the
labor ministers were keen supporters of leaving the
government.
Yossi Beilin too, no longer even an MK, is in favor of
leaving the government immediately. In the opposition
everyone is equal and these MKs want everyone in their party
to have equal status. They are clearly interested in
"Opposition Now."
Before the elections for the leadership of the Labor party,
it was assumed that Knesset Chairman Avraham Burg would work
towards taking the party out of the government as soon as he
was elected. Burg, realizing that public opinion was in favor
of continuing with a Government of National Unity, made a
point of issuing announcements to the effect that he had no
intentions of dismantling the government, because he felt
that such a government was essential for the State at this
time.
The elections came and went, Burg was elected (kind of), and
now he is an avid supporter of his party leaving the
government. This is not due so much to political, security or
even party political reasons. It is more to do with what
suits Burg himself.
Burg these days is preoccupied with one topic only: the
announcement of his victory in the Labor party primaries and
his election as party chairman. Nothing else is of concern to
him. Burg's assessment is that so long as the Labor party is
inside the government it has no interest to decide the issue
of who is to be its next chairman. A party in power has no
great need for a chairman. It has Peres as minister to
represent it vis-a-vis Sharon, and there is no need to
prepare the party as an alternative to the Likud. Every
minister has his own niche, and everybody is happy with the
current situation.
A party in opposition, on the other hand, cannot function
without a chairman giving it a clear sense of direction. It
has to develop an alternative candidate for Prime Minister
and an alternative to the existing government. Therefore,
from Burg's point of view, leaving the government would bring
the announcement of his election as party chairman that much
closer. It would force his party to come to a decision on the
dispute between him and Ben Eliezer, instead of putting the
subject on hold, as is the current situation, even though
more than month and a half has passed since the internal
elections.
Chaim Ramon did not support Burg in the primaries, despite
the strong friendship between them, mainly because Ramon
thought that he was better suited to the job than Burg. Like
Burg, Ramon realizes that a party in opposition has to
appoint a leader but, unlike Burg, Ramon thinks that the
complicated legal situation in the battle between Burg and
Ben-Eliezer will make it impossible to come to a decision and
new primaries will have to be called for, thus giving him a
chance to compete for the longed for job.
It turns out that Ramon and Burg are cooperating to achieve
the same purpose, even though they have both reached a
different conclusion. Both of them think that leaving the
government will help them achieve their goal of reaching the
top.
