On March 10th 2015, the Arutz Sheva Israel National News website, published an article titled “Rabbi Yosef’s Daughter Clarifies: Shas is Leftist”. The article reports on what Rabbanit Adina Bar-Shalom, a leading voice for the Shas party, said at a meeting in Tel Aviv hosted by the Geneva Initiative and what her opinion reveals about the Shas political perspective. As the title implies Rabbanit Adina is the daughter of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who was one of the most influential rabbis of modern Israel and more importantly founded the Shas party in 1984. He was the voice of the Sephardic and Mizrahi ultra orthodox Jews, acting as Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel from 1973-1983. As a founder he created the Shas party with his ultra-orthodox Sephardic beliefs in mind and guided the party with these values as the Shas spiritual leader until his death in 2013. After Yosef’s death, Bar-Shalom his daughter has become a major source for her father's opinion with concern to the Shas party, and politics and religion as a whole. She is a major political influence in her own right, being recognized as an Israeli Prize winner in 2014 for her special contributions throughout her life to Israeli society and the State of Israel.
The article focused on her discussion points at the Geneva Initiative meeting on March 9th 2015 concerning peace deals between Israel and the Palestinians. She mentioned her fear of the consequences of electing another radical right wing government in the upcoming elections (in which the right wing Likud party ended up winning). Her fear is that the tremendous amount of blood spilled over the conflict within the past couple years will increasingly get worse as the right wing government continues to fail to produce a viable peace agreement. She further goes on to mention that if there is a peace process in the upcoming elections, Shas including the chairman Aryeh Deri and other Shas members of the Knesset will push adamantly for the success of the initiative, just as her father would have wanted. The authors of this article respond to Bar-Shalom's claim that her father would have supported the peace process, claiming that Deri (the current chairman of Shas) was the real mind behind the Shas peaceful position at the Oslo accords, not Yosef.
Bar-Shalom continued to talk about her father Rabbi Yosef and his politics, claiming that her father loved Eli Yishai(who recently broke off from Shas to form the right wing-haredi and religious party, Yachad -Ha’am Itanu) but disapproved his right wing path. She mentions that Yishai committed an act that her father forbid when he ascended the Temple Mount in 2007, which exasperated the Arab-Israeli tension. Again the authors of this article refute Bar-Shalom’s claim of her father's opinion, they believe that Yosef actually approved of Yishai more than Deri, instead of Bar-Shalom's claim of the opposite.
The article ends with a discussion of the condition of the Arab citizens of Israel. Bar-Shalom claims that Israeli Jewish ignorance about the reality of the maltreatment of Israeli Arabs is what has fostered the hatred. She believes that if the State of Israel acted correctly to address the needs of Arab Israelis, the non Jewish population could be utilized as a bridge of understanding, instead of a wrench in the gears of peace. The authors conclude the article by presenting information that portrays Arab Israelis as opposing the state of Israel. They mention that according to a poll late last year, 29% of Arab Israelis blamed the state of Israel for increased terrorism, and that this meant that a third of Arab Israelis approved of this terrorism(a claim I will refute). The authors add that Arab Israeli protesting (against the state of Israel) on Israeli independence day is a prime example of how blatant Arab Israeli disapproval of the State is.
The article summarized above was co-written by Uzi Baruch and Ari Yashar. Uzi Baruch is the Editor in Chief at Arutz Sheva and Ari Yashar is a member of the Arutz Sheva 24-hour News Desk. Arutz Sheva is a media network that identifies with religious Zionism. It is known for being a right of center news agency, some comparing it to the Israeli equivalent of US Fox News or the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency.
This religious Zionist/right wing tone is exemplified throughout the article. The authors give tacit disapproval of Rabbanit Adina Bar-Shalom concerning her advocacy for accelerated Israeli-Palestinian peace deals and her criticism of the right wing government. They dismiss Bar-Shalom’s claims about her father's political opinion on two occasions, undermining her reliability. When she put the blame on Israeli Jews for the continuation of difficulties in the countries conflicts, Baruch and Yashar lay claim that the blame is truthfully on the Arabs. They mention how Arab Israelis protest against the state annually on its own independence day and how a third of them approve of terrorism, demonizing the Arab citizens of Israel after Bar-Shalom defended them as not the source of the problem.
The article also makes a false assumption in its second to last paragraph about the ramifications of a poll on Israeli opinion of terror. The poll claims that 29% of Arab Israelis blame the state for the wave of terrorism after last summer's war, and the authors falsely assume that this meant that a third of Israeli Arabs approve of the terrorism. This claim is irrational, just because they blame the state of Israel for the increased terrorism does not mean that they approve of the terrorism itself. One can believe in an actions origin without approving of the action. Baruch and Yashar’s irrational assumption, belittling and demonizing the Arab-Israelis, gives support to their right wing/ religious Zionist underlying aspirations.
Regardless of the authors point of view, the sources used in this article are all reliable. While the Arutz Sheva media network began in 1988 as an illegal radio station broadcasting from a boat in the Mediterranean sea, it has evolved into the self proclaimed number one place for news from Israel, the Jewish World and the Middle East. In 1999 the Knesset granted it a licence to broadcast and absolved Arutz Sheva from earlier illegalities. The internet radio show still broadcasts, along with a website, and the B’Sheva newspaper is the fourth most widely read newspaper in Israel. This article may have a right wing overtone but the information is legitimate. It has become more and more evident as I continue to analyze the Arab-Israeli conflict through journalism, that one article is never efficient to get a proper understanding of an issue.
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