Restoring the 'Past Glory' Of the Israeli Shas Party
Aryeh Deri, the newly re-appointed head of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, inherits a sacred movement which has lost its support base, writes Mazal Mualem.
“I want to return Shas to the citizens,” proclaimed new-old ultra-Orthodox Shas party Chairman Aryeh Deri, the morning after former Interior Minister Eli Yishai’s official dismissal from head of the movement on May 2.
In an interview with the army radio station, Deri sounds happy and self-confident, as befits one who realized a dream against all odds and now emerges ready to play the role of his life.
But Deri is likely to discover very quickly that his objective of “restoring past glory” — to use Shas’ election campaign slogan — is not an easy one to achieve. He may find out that his aspirations to turn Shas into a large party once again, and himself into a social leader addressing the wide public, is not commensurate with his strategy of placing the ethnic conflict front and center. While Deri prefers to call this “a struggle against Sephardi exclusion,” it is but a euphemism for the things he himself executes: intentional encouragement of a public discourse designed to cause ethnic-class strife — for his political purposes, of course.
Deri acts with pure cynicism. He declares his desire to return Shas to the citizens, when in fact he talks about citizens of a certain type. In effect, in light of the ethnic provocations he has generated since returning to political life, he cannot be — and does not want to be — everyone’s political home.
