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Al-Ahram Weekly 10 - 16 August 2000 Issue No. 494 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 10 - 16 August 2000 Issue No. 494
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Books Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons The cuckoo has landed
According to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef Palestinians are "snakes, accursed, wicked ones, Ishmaelites [Arabs] whom the Holy One is sorry he created." And Jews who perished at the hands of the Nazis, the rabbi continued, were being punished because they were reincarnations of sinners from previous generations.Now, were it not for the case that Rabbi Yosef is the spiritual leader of the orthodox Shas movement, one would be able to write off his statements as a case of senile dementia, the ravings of a madman. Which is something the Israeli press has been keen to do, endlessly quoting one Holocaust survivor who described him as an "old fool."
But the furore the rabbi's comments elicited in Israel, ironically, are the product of an attempt to brush the unsavoury matter beneath the carpet, an attempt to cover the embarrassment that has ensued from such views being expressed by a man who has effectively operated as Israel's leading power-broker. For such are the vagaries of democracy, Israeli style, that by virtue of commanding 17 seats in the Knesset, the spiritual leader of ultra-orthodox Shas party controls the fate of the Israeli government. Given this fact the rabbi's ravings become less farcical than chilling.
Tellingly, his viciously racist comments on Palestinians have been all but ignored in Israel itself, attention focusing instead on the upset he has caused Holocaust survivors. Ignored, too, is the important matter of how Israel's prime minister can possibly be pursuing a peace agreement with a people considered "snakes" by the man on whom his survival has depended.
As the peace process unravels, the inherent contradictions of that pursuit come increasingly to the fore. Israel's democracy -- at its own estimation -- is a political system that allows for the expression of the will of its citizens and that, apparently, means allowing a man like Rabbi Yosef to dictate to the Israeli government. The government itself, then, comes to embody the contradictions inherent in Israeli society, a society that -- increasingly placed under the microscope by virtue of its avowed search for peace -- appears increasingly on the point of implosion. The lunatics, one is forced to concede, have already taken over the asylum.
