Right of Way

It’s been years since Israel was hit by such a tsunami of crises. A new Iran deal is on the verge of being signed, to the despair of a weak Israeli government. The worldwide economic crisis has driven up prices around the globe, but in Israel that surge comes on top of the new taxes imposed by the government on vulnerable populations. This cocktail is making life in the Jewish state harder than ever. Deri’s personal situation was complicated further by the charge that he bore some culpability for last year’s Meron disaster that claimed 45 lives on his watch as interior minister.

And in the middle of all this, Shas as a movement and Deri, both as its leader and as an individual, have had to deal with the sudden petirah of the nasi of Shas’s Moetzet Chachmei HaTorah, Chacham Shalom Cohen ztz”l. His abrupt passing left the chareidi community in shock, and the Shas movement, for the first time since its founding, without a clear spiritual leader — in the middle of an election campaign.

Two months before the polls open, we sat down with one of the heavyweights of Israeli politics to discuss Meron — a chareidi tragedy about which chareidi politicians have been reticent — as well as Shas’s unwavering support for Netanyahu, and the million-dollar question: Does Bibi have what it takes to get back into power again?

We opened the discussion on Shas’s campaign, which focuses on the plight of the lower socioeconomic stratum in general rather than that of the chareidi community specifically. Deri has called Shas “the only compassionate party in Israel,” and his biggest target is Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman, once a good friend, now a bitter enemy — personally and politically.