Some 15 years ago, Aryeh Deri entered the gates of the Maasiyahu Prison, southeast of Tel Aviv, to begin serving time after being convicted of bribery, fraud and breach of trust while serving as minister of interior and chairman of the ultra-Orthodox Sephardic Shas Party. On March 29, Deri’s name was, once again, linked to suspicions of alleged criminal wrongdoing while serving, once again, as minister of interior and Shas chairman. The first Deri affair, which resulted in his incarceration in September 2000, marked a low point in the Israeli judicial system's public standing. This week, the court was again made a scapegoat by irresponsible, unbridled politicians.
Back in 2000, hundreds of followers accompanied Deri to the gates of Maasiyahu, chanting, “He is innocent,” after unanimous court decisions involving six judges (three at the district court level and three on the Supreme Court). Public figures, rabbis and a prominent journalist, the late Amnon Dankner, made pilgrimages to a protest tent proclaimed “The Roar of the Lion” — Aryeh means “lion” in Hebrew — erected outside the prison gates.
The May 1999 elections, for the 15th Knesset, had been held in the shadow of the tough sentence handed down to the Shas leader. Deri's Sephardic supporters turned the occasion into a no-confidence vote on the judicial system, boosting support for Shas, which won 17 seats, up from its previous 10.
This time around — should the initial investigation into corruption allegations against Deri turn into a full-fledged case and Deri once again recruit his legions for an assault on law enforcement and the judiciary — he will find loyal partners in the top echelons of government. Already, in the days preceding a report on Channel 2 about the suspicions surrounding Deri, the prime minister and members of his Cabinet launched an attack on the Supreme Court. The alleged justification for the attack was the court’s March 27 decision ordering the government to scrap the current version of the plan for exploiting the country’s natural gas reserves.
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