The coalition infight continues as UTJ bad-mouths Smotritch and Shas and Otzma Yehudit continue to snipe at each other. The Shas and Otzma sniping is the interesting part.
Shas recently decided it wanted to push off the elections for the Chief Rabbinate so it prepared a law to enable that. The law passed its first reading yesterday and Otzma did not vote for it. Otzma criticized Shas for changing the rules of the game in the middle of the game. Elections are underway, candidates have announced and have been campaigning and now is not the time to make changes. Shas claims they have to push it off to keep the elections kosher. While I do not understand it, the issue is the proximity of the Chief Rabbinate elections to the upcoming municipal elections and somehow one affects the other with mayors possibly supporting rabbinic candidates when they themselves might not be re-elected.
So, Otzma did not support the bill presented by Shas to postpone the Chief Rabbinate elections. Shas then accused Otzma of having "interests" and those interests being behind their opposition. What are their interests? Minister Amichai Eliyahu is the son of Rav Shmuel Eliyahu and according to Shas, Otzma is making this trouble because they want Rav Shmuel Eliyahu to be appointed Chief Rabbi. Shas says they tried to push his candidacy and tried to make a deal in exchange for supporting postponing the bill. Shas accused Otzma of being willing to forgo election purity if they would have been able to get some positions for their people.source: Kikar
The funny part is that the Chief Rabbinate elections require no purity or anything at all. they are not even actually elections, more like selections, with Shas almost completely controlling the entire process. Whether Otzma wanted Rav Eliyahu appointed or not, is that any worse than Shas trying to decide between supporting Aryeh Deri's brother or Rav Yizchak Yosef's brother? Is only Otzma not allowed to prefer a family member (if they actually did)?
------------------------------------------------------
Reach thousands of readers with your ad by advertising on Life in Israel
------------------------------------------------------
