Here is an article that was published last week in the news editions, and did not move the thresholds: the State Attorney's Office closed a plea deal with the Shas chairman.
No indictment will be filed against Aryeh Deri, and he will plead guilty to tax offenses and retire from the Knesset (for carrying out real estate transactions that were not properly reported to the tax authorities in a manner that benefited him).
This incident, which the ombudsman called a "mouse," is historically the tip of the iceberg. And a convoy from the last century continues: it began with MK Yair Levy, the founder of the El HaMaayan education network, who transferred hundreds of thousands of shekels, state funds, to private individuals, including his family, and was sent to four years in prison. In the mid-1990s he was convicted. Justice Shalom sentenced the then Minister and Deputy Minister, Rafael Pinhasi, for illegally transferring funds, and sentenced him to 12 months probation. Education to get budgets, and two years running in jail.
It goes on and on: in 2008, Knesset member and minister Shlomo Benizri was convicted of bribery, breach of trust and obstruction of justice, and spent more than two years in prison.
And we have not yet talked about Deri of the 90s and Yair Levy who forged a job for an academic degree.
Case by case is not a case but a pattern, if you will political culture.
Allegedly, the claimant will argue that sabotage and corruption are the lot of all parties in Israel.
This is a fundamental mistake.
Shas, like any group, has its own sources, and in order to understand them we must enter "inside", the Lithuanian yeshivas, the beit midrash and its synagogues - the sites where the values and beliefs of the group are fermented, and are not absorbed at first glance.
Scholars who go down to extract this knowledge, which is commonly called in anthropological language the "group meaning structure" —that is, the unique language and codes understood only by members of the specific group — will recognize the line that state authority is technically, but not morally binding; The social field around Bnei Brak is intended only for mobilizing the masses, and the goal is: to save as many lost souls as possible, even at the cost of rounding corners in everything related to dry law. And this logic has, as we see, a statistical result. This is the crude line, and if anyone has any doubts about it, they are welcome to hear the response of the Shas Council of Sages to the plea deal (which we will mention, a personal, non-public case): "Continue (Rave Arieh) in your great actions; Strong and courageous, continue to sanctify the name of heaven in the multitude. "What shall we say and what will we justify, who are we? To her sister,The ultra-Orthodox-Ashkenazi party.
A super-study done in about 20 years' time about this party will reveal that with the exception of daring judges, officials and sometimes a few brave journalists, there were no righteous people in this story.
It all fell to uncles.
It started with the right, for which the connection with Shas is almost natural, and therefore blinds the eye; and continues with the Zionist left, which in the 1990s admired the "social" party that finally does not break to the right. Deri's curse "comes to an end with his colleagues in the ruling Labor (Labor) party, who in the 1990s closed their eyes as long as the creed was trained to promote peace. The radical left also voluntarily went blind: Against the "whites."
Yes, what do we have to do with "trifles" such as political corruption and spoiling the path of Judaism, if we are presented with a historic opportunity to advance the Marxist utopia?
If you will, this is the sad story of Israeli politics over the past 40 years.
Were we wrong?
Fixed!
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