Rabbanit Adina Bar-Shalom, Israel Prize winner and daughter of the late Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual founder of the haredi Shas party, took part on Monday in a meeting in Tel Aviv held by the Geneva Initiative in which 30 political activists from different parties were featured.
In the meeting, Bar-Shalom spoke about peace deals, saying “I’m afraid of the ramifications that will be from a radical right government. We don’t want a binational state. If we continue in the current situation – we’ll reach that.”
“A lot of blood was spilled here and every couple of years there’s another war. The only alternative is two states to two peoples. As more time passes we’ll only reach a worse (peace) deal,” opined the rabbanit.
Ironically while Rabbi Yosef initially issued an opinion supporting the concept of giving up land for peace, after the 1993 Oslo Accords erupted in terrorist wars he famously reversed his position, realizing that such deals and concessions onthe land of Israel only cause more bloodshed.
Bar-Shalom said in the meeting that she had joined the Geneva Initiative with her father’s blessings, clarifying “if there will be a peace process in the coming elections, Shas, (chairman Aryeh) Deri and the (Shas) MKs will push (it forward) with all their strength. They went with father on this matter. The only one who didn’t go in father’s path is Eli Yishai.”
Yishai recently broke off from Shas to form his own right-wing haredi and religious Zionist party, Yachad – Ha’am Itanu.
Contrary to Bar-Shalom’s words claiming Rabbi Yosef supported a peace deal, recordings have shown that it was Deri who was behind Shas’s position on Oslo, and not Rabbi Yosef as Deri later claimed. Likewise the records show Rabbi Yosef called Yishai “my favorite,” giving him permission to form his own party, and on the other hand condemned “evil” Deri for his corruption that had him jailed in 1999.
Speaking about Rabbi Yosef, Bar-Shalom continued, claiming “father loved Eli Yishai, but didn’t love the right-wing path. Yishai joined with those who ascend the Temple Mount, something that father completely forbid. Those who ascend the Temple Mount cause bloodshed.”
The rabbanit, who has been working in recent months to save Shas which has been slipping in polls, presented Arab citizens of Israel as suffering and essentially blamed Israeli Jews for causing Arab terrorism.
“For some reason we forgot that we live in a country where Arabs also live and we discriminate their rights,” she claimed. “They don’t have street names, their lives look awful. That instills the hatred in them.”
“Instead of them serving as a bridge to the Palestinians (i.e. Arab residents of Judea, Samaria and Gaza), they are in a place where they don’t know what to choose. If the state of Israel knew to anchor their rights as is needed, we wouldn’t be in a problem like this,” stated Bar-Shalom.
While some politicians, even on the right, have claimed Arab citizens of Israel are loyal to the state, a poll late last year showed 29% of Arab citizens of Israel blamed the state for the wave of terrorism after last summer’s war, meaning a third of Israeli Arabs gave tacit approval to terrorism.
Likewise massive rallies by Arab citizens of Israel on Israeli Independence Day protesting the very existence of the state they are citizens of has become a yearly occurrence.
There is NO two states solution acceptable to the Pal. So Malley and Obama will do their ut most best to undermine IL and try to make it disappear as per the wishes of the Pal.
This is the same with denying Iran access to nuke warheads by giving them everything they need to build them when they want.
I guess there’s something to say for the separation of religion and state, after all.
To be a leftist is to live in an imaginary world rather than the real world. When will they wake up and realize that nothing Israel gives to the Arabs will stop their hatred and their violence against Jews?
How sad that Shas seems to suffer from Stockholm Syndrome. To the Rabbanit: What part of “a Jew-Free Palestinian State from the River to the Sea” do you not understand? And finally, how can someone claim to be faithful to God’s Torah and at the same time feel that the heart of Eretz Israel is theirs to give away, especially to those who seek to murder Jews? I hope every Israeli voter sees this before election day.