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Israeli candidate takes on ultra-Orthodox Ex-commentator shakes up the race By Dan Ephron, Globe Correspondent, 12/26/2002 TEL AVIV - Tommy Lapid will not be Israel's next prime minister. But the 72-year-old journalist-turned-politician might get enough votes in next month's election to change Israeli politics dramatically, according to a rising chorus of pundits here. Lapid, a Holocaust survivor who leaped to local fame as a boisterous television commentator, is attracting voters from the left and right with a party that blames Israel's ultra-Orthodox Jews for many of the country's woes and seeks to empower the secular middle class. In television spots set to air next month, his centrist Shinui party portrays the ultra-Orthodox as a burden on society - citizens who neither work, pay taxes, nor serve in the army, which is stretched to the limit after more than two years of fighting with the Palestinians. Some Israelis are uncomfortable with the tone of the campaign, and Lapid's sharpest critics say his slogans sound a little like the rhetoric of Europe's worst anti-Semites. But the message is resonating loudly with secular Jews long angry at the disproportionate political power wielded by the ultra-Orthodox and lately worn out by endless rounds of reserve duty in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In fact, Lapid, who bears a striking resemblance to the late actor Carroll O'Connor - television's Archie Bunker - is doing so well in the polls that analysts say Shinui could be the linchpin that holds together the next governing coalition, a role typically reserved for the ultra-Orthodox parties. ''Our goal is to replace the ultra-Orthodox as the kingmakers and ... help build a secular coalition,'' Lapid said in his Tel Aviv office. Doing so could change the face of Israel, where governments have always included religious and ultra-Orthodox parties. Lapid says he's up to the task. A native of Yugoslavia, Lapid immigrated to Israel in 1948 at age 17, after surviving World War II in a Budapest ghetto while 12 members of his family died in concentration camps. Lapid's father was a newspaper editor and Lapid followed in his footsteps, working for decades at the daily Maariv newspaper and eventually serving as managing editor. But it wasn't until he began appearing as a panelist on a popular television news show called ''Popolitica'' in the 1990s that Lapid and his caustic views of the ultra-Orthodox became known to Israelis. On one show, usually a political shout-fest, he branded ultra-Orthodox Jews as leeches. On another that included gay and ultra-Orthodox guests, he said he would rather see his son become a homosexual than a student at a yeshiva (Jewish seminary). His sparring with ultra-Orthodox panelists came to symbolize the schism in Israel between the religious minority, which has used its political power over the decades to try to pull the country closer to observant Judaism, and the secular majority. It also subjected Lapid to sharp criticism. ''I think his rhetoric borders on anti-Semitism,'' said Avraham Ravitz, an ultra-Orthodox member of Parliament from the Torah Judaism party. ''The hatred he spreads and the language he uses when he talks about religious groups reminds me of very dark days in our history,'' he said. But many viewers felt Lapid was expressing - forcefully, if not always eloquently - their own resentment of the ultra-Orthodox, who make up about 12 percent of Israel's population. ''I'm not hateful, I'm angry,'' Lapid said in the interview. ''I'm an old-fashioned Western liberal.'' Most ultra-Orthodox Jews are exempted from army service under an agreement between rabbis and early leaders of the Jewish state, a source of constant friction with secular Israelis. Many opt for a life of religious study instead of work, living off government subsidies. Lapid says he had not considered going into politics until a month before t he 1999 parliamentary election when activists in Shinui, which then looked like it was on the verge of disappearing, asked him to lead the party. Under Lapid, Shinui won six seats in the 120-member Parliament in 1999. Polls published now predict the party will double its representation. Yaron Ezrahi, a political scientist at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, says one reason for Shinui's surge in popularity is the growing burden of military duty reservists have been made to shoulder during fighting with the Palestinians. ''There's a sense that the distribution of this burden is not equal and therefore unfair. People have become quite bitter about it and Lapid addresses that bitterness,'' Ezrahi said. ''His popularity is a backlash after years of dominance by the ultra-Orthodox,'' he said. The sentiment is captured in one of Shinui's television spots. In it, an animated character, meant to symbolize a secular middle-class Israeli, is collapsing under the weight of falling black hats - the kind worn by ultra-Orthodox Jews. In the next scene, the party's logo pushes the black hats aside and allows the secular Israeli to stand tall again. Other analysts believe Israelis who were guided by issues of peace and security in previous votes now despair of any possible improvement in relations with the Palestinians. With no hope for a resolution of the conflict, many Israelis will vote according to their feelings on narrow issues, including the status of the ultra-Orthodox. Unlike other Israeli parties that highlight the Palestinian question in their platforms, Shinui downplays its position on the fate of the West Bank and Gaza. Lapid says Shinui is centrist and can join a coalition with either Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's right-wing Likud party or Amram Mitzna's left-center Labor. He prefers a broad coalition that includes Likud, Labor, and Shinui, and he rules out any partnership with the ultra-Orthodox parties, which currently control 22 seats in Parliament. That configuration will not be easy to achieve. Both Likud and Labor have tried to maintain good ties with the ultra-Orthodox parties, whose support they have traditionally needed for coalition-building. But most polls show the ultra-Orthodox in decline, including Shas, a political powerhouse for the last decade. Ezrahi says even if Shinui is not brought into the coalition, its strength would lower the political price religious parties could charge for their support. ''They could, in principle, have a coalition without the religious,'' he says. ''The very fact that this possibility exists would limit the power of the ultra-Orthodox.'' This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 12/26/2002. � Copyright 2002 New York Times Co. � Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company Extending our newspaper services to the web Return to the home page of The Globe Online <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. 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