Why one Israeli minister always feels persecuted

“Aryeh Deri decided: He won’t be waging an ethnic campaign.” The inner circle of the Shas leader and minister of the interior released that headline on the evening of April 2 in response to the decision to open a criminal investigation against him on charges of alleged corruption.

In their press briefing, Deri’s spokesmen explained that he had instructed those closest to him “not to wage a whiny campaign focusing on victimhood, because he is no longer where he was so many years ago.” Evidently, they are referring to Deri's conviction for corruption in 1999.

Officially, Deri really is conveying a sense of statesmanship and restraint. He is not attacking law enforcement, nor is he claiming that he is being persecuted. But will Deri really hold back this time and keep the weapon of ethnic discrimination out of the game?

When dealing with a party like Shas, the possibility of that happening doesn’t really exist. After all, Shas emerged from the clashes between the Ashkenazi (European) and Mizrahi (Middle Eastern) ultra-Orthodox communities. Its DNA still bears the battle scars from its struggle on behalf of Mizrahi identity. Israel has never seen a party like Shas, which shoved ethnic origins and Mizrahi identity right in Israelis’ faces. Nor has Israel ever seen a politician like Deri, who brought tens of thousands of people to the polls to protest the discrimination they faced. Shas’ great electoral victory in the 1999 election is attributed to Deri, who won the party 19 seats on the backdrop of the criminal trial against him and his conviction for bribery (for which he was sentenced to prison time). The legendary “He’s innocent” campaign was a classic ethnic campaign and perhaps the most effective of them all. It portrayed Deri as a talented young Mizrahi leader, a bright star in Israeli politics, who was eventually persecuted all because of his ethnic origins and successes.