Yishai on Grass is not Potty

Eli Yishai, Israel’s minister of the interior, a man who has probably never heard of, let alone read Günter Grass, has announced that Grass would not be permitted to enter Israel. This hysterical and populist announcement makes Israel more similar to Iran than to the West, it so very much hopes to be part of.

Shas, Yishai’s party, with its ten out of the 120 members of Israel’s parliament, has remarkable parallels with Iran: ultraorthodox, hatred spreading and homophobe. Like Iran, there is a man who runs government and there is a supreme spiritual leader. Rabbi Ovadia Joseph, Shas's supreme leader himself, is not a member of Israel’s government. He leaves that to Yishai and his colleagues who in turn obey their spiritual leader's instructions.

And now, the physical similarity: Israel’s Rabbi with his Deputy Prime Minister Yishai and Iran’s Ayatollah with President Ahmadinejad.

Holy Alliances

Two stories that have recently appeared in the press:

Theophilos III, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, has intervened with Israeli President Peres to grant amnesty to an Israeli in jail. Curiously, the Israeli in question is not a member of his own Church but a Jew: ultra-orthodox Shlomo Benizri, a former Israeli cabinet member, is serving a four-year jail sentence for taking bribes and for breach of trust.

Is Theophilus just a particularly nice man or is this somehow connected to the fact that the Greek Orthodox Church owns very much land in Israel (including the land on which the Knesset, Israel’s parliament is built) and that Shas, Benizri’s party, is a very potent power broker in the country?

The Catholic Church has condemned the French government for attempting to prohibit the wearing of Burqas in public. The Church explained that retaliation on Christians in Muslim countries might follow.

File note for future reference: in dealings with the Vatican - blackmail works.