Volume 67, Issue 7

Night of Controversy, New Thoughts on Israel at Yeshiva
by Yoni Gross

On November 6, Yeshiva’s Israel Club brought in a new face in the Israeli political scene. Approximately sixty students came to hear Shmuel Sackett, a new member of the Likud Central committee, as well as a founder and director of the “Manhigut Yehudit” (Jewish Leadership) faction of the Likud party and the Zo Artzeinu organization, a protest and civil disobedience movement aimed at ending the Oslo peace process.  Sackett, along with his faction’s candidate for Likud party chairman, Moshe Feiglin, is part of a new movement with the purpose of bringing stronger Jewish character and leadership to the state of Israel.

The main contenders for Likud chairman and, most likely, the Prime Minister’s office, are current Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.  Both these men, according to Sackett, have had a chance to lead Israel out of the troublesome circumstances it faces and failed to do so.  “It’s like staying on the bus heading the wrong way because there is a new driver,” said Sackett. With so many smaller parties already on the Israeli political scene, they felt the best way to make change seemed to them to be to work from within.  Rather than form their own party, Manhigut Yehudit seeks to gain a majority within Israel’s largest party, Likud, thereby securing for itself the Prime Minister’s office.

Students were generally skeptical about Manhigut Yehudit’s chances in their first election, seeing them rather as a future possibility.  With so much of media attention and public opinion focused on the two main candidates, it seems unlikely that this newcomer will be able to steal the political stage.  The faction’s second goal, however, did provoke a more hopeful reaction at Sackett’s speech.

Manhigut Yehudit’s other agenda is, as their name proclaims, Jewish leadership.  The faction seeks to install leaders into Israeli government who have a religious connection to the foundations of Judaism.  “Israel needs to make a decision,” said Sackett, “is it a state of Jews or a Jewish State?”  The faction believes in reintroducing religious and historical awareness of Judaism into the country’s public education system, as well as promoting greater recognition of distinctively Jewish holidays, such as Sukkos, and not just Israeli ones like Yom Ha’atzma’ut (Israeli Independence Day). Sackett took care to insist that religion would never be forced on anyone by the government, even if his faction were successful in this endeavor.

Many of those attending the address thought he presented some novel ideas in.  However, this was mixed with skepticism. “He has good strategic planning, but is lacking in tactical planning,” said Sy Syms sophomore Dovid Erdfarb.  Yeshiva College junior Ari Feldman commented that Sackett was “extremely vague on what he means by Jewish identity” that he hopes to imbue the state with.

One student voice was opposed in the first place to the presence of this speaker on campus. YC sophomore Avi Shefa lodged a protest with the Israel club for inviting Sackett and picketed the event itself, saying he was not opposed to Sackett’s current political positions but to his history.  “My decision to picket was not based on a left versus right political dispute,” maintained Shefa. “Rather, it was a response of a strong believer in democracy to a convicted felon who scoffs at the rule of law. Shmuel Sackett was convicted of sedition and his organization has called for civilians to kill those whom the government of Israel has decided not to. He should not have been invited to speak at Yeshiva University.” 

YC Sophomore Tzvi Kahn, who organized the event, responded that Sackett and Feiglin’s sedition convictions were a reaction to their opposition to the Oslo Accords. Kahn claims that the Rabin government believed any opposition to the peace process to be a pro-war position, and so any such position was demonized and often viewed as seditious.  “Yes, he has consistently violated the rule of law,” responded Kahn, “because he led all these protests, but that is a far cry from advocating violence.”

The evening was generally a unique opportunity for Yeshiva students to see a new side of the Israeli political arena, as Americans usually do not see much of the domestic side of Israeli politics.¨

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