Quick poll: Which ministry is bigger in terms of personnel and standards, the Ministry of the Interior or the Population Authority?
It is assumed that most of you (like me) will answer that the Ministry of the Interior.
After all, this is a particularly prestigious case during coalition negotiations, in contrast to a drab authority devoid of aura that is anyway under the Ministry of the Interior.
Well, the Population Authority is significantly larger than the Ministry of the Interior.
And yet, this is an office where everyone involved - from the senior leadership to the last junior parliamentary assistants - knows how to recite the same open secret: the Israeli Population Authority is divided into two - the one that is related to all the processing of passports, identity cards, etc., which works beautifully;
And the second, which deals with immigration and enforcement, which is a dysfunctional body to the point of non-existence.
How much doesn't exist?
This week the court announced that it was granting status to a thousand Sudanese Muslim infiltrators, after the Population Authority did not bother to check their applications.
Let's ignore for a moment the judicial system - a political body for all intents and purposes, whose leaders proudly voted against the law of returns, and whose main desire is to make Israel a state for all its citizens.
There are no expectations from him.
The question is: why, for God's sake, did the Population Authority not check the applications?
How does it happen that during a bloody war over the future of the Jewish state, a thousand hostile Muslims will receive permission to continue listening to incitement in mosques and vote in municipal elections?
Why does everyone concerned know that the next step - the granting of "temporary" (practically permanent) status to about 10,000 Eritreans - will happen again without inspection?
The blame does not lie with the minority of employees in the PA, who are employed at insulting wages and with a huge workload, but with those who decided that these are the conditions for zero powers: this man's name is Aryeh Deri.
With the exception of a brief respite, Deri has been at the head of the office since 2016 and insists on keeping the authority with him.
At the same time, he makes sure that it remains poor, falling apart, lacking quality personnel at the field levels (do you want to do hard work as immigration inspectors for about NIS 6,000 per month?) and completely impotent.
We've gotten used to the reality where the name "Deri" symbolizes jobs and combos from the bouncer, and for the sake of fairness we'll emphasize that he didn't invent the wheel.
The problem is that this is no longer about another budget exception for David and my nephew, but about the future of all of us.
While every progressive western country was worried about expelling infiltrators - under Deri, who still occasionally claims to be a right-wing man, the gates of the only Jewish state in the world were broken open to anyone, hostile Muslims in particular, and he doesn't even bother to provide explanations.
Deri Klassi (or Arbel, or any other puppet acting on his behalf) does not want a functioning office, but more power and a budget and a fertile ground for jobbers.
We've gotten used to the reality where the name "Deri" symbolizes jobs and combos from the bouncer, and for the sake of fairness we'll emphasize that he didn't invent the wheel.
The problem is that this is no longer about another budget exception for David and my nephew, but about the future of all of us
This ongoing colossal failure has many forefathers: from Netanyahu, who as usual closes his eyes, through the right in its various incarnations to religious Zionism, who for some reason preferred to commit suicide over offices related to Jewish heritage, much less the one office that is truly critical to the future of Judaism in Israel.
But the main address is Deri, as he insisted.
The problem is that of all the parties in the Knesset, there is a consensus among non-parliamentary civil organizations that Shas, contrary to its image, is an inaccessible party.
But that's a topic for another column.
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