In a favorite Seinfeld episode, hapless George Costanza furiously quits his job after being disallowed use of the executive toilet. After regretting the decision when he realizes he has no job prospects, he takes Jerry’s advice and shows up for work at the beginning of the week, pretending that he never quit.
Shas chairman MK Arye Deri is probably not as familiar with Seinfeld as he is with Israel’s political system, but he seems to have adopted Seinfeld’s advice as well.
Deri mislead the court
On January 22, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired Deri from the positions of health minister, interior minister and deputy prime minister. The High Court of Justice forced Netanyahu to fire Deri both because of the “extreme unreasonableness” of him serving as a minister after three criminal convictions committed in a public role, and because Deri received a lenient plea bargain in January 2022 by misleading the court to believe that he would quit politics.
Deri’s 2022 plea bargain included a yearlong suspended jail sentence. He was then a Knesset member, and in such convictions of public servants the court usually must decide whether they include moral turpitude. Deri resigned as an MK in order to avoid this decision.
For seven years one cannot serve as a minister if he committed a crime with moral turpitude that included a jail sentence. As a ministerial candidate, Deri was supposed to turn to former Central Elections Committee chairman, Supreme Court Judge Isaac Amit for a decision on the moral turpitude issue.
But instead, Deri had the coalition amend a Basic Law so that the issue did not apply for suspended jail sentences, and thereby again wormed his way around a legal barrier.
The High Court had enough. Not only was Deri a serial criminal, he also repeatedly tried to outmaneuver the courts in order to avoid the consequences of his offenses. One may not take advantage of the law in order to avoid the consequences of one’s criminal actions.
The coalition, however, believes otherwise.
A few hours after the ruling, Deri vowed to supporters who flocked to his home that “if they block us from entering through the door, we will enter through the window; and if the window is shut, we will enter from the roof.”
Netanyahu and Knesset members of the Likud, Shas and other parties stated publicly in a highly choreographed press conference the day after Deri’s sacking that they would do all that it takes, including more legislation, to bring Deri back; and, led by Shas, the coalition argued in interview after interview that millions of people had voted for the coalition parties knowing full well what Deri’s actions had been, and that Netanyahu had never concealed the fact that he intended to appoint Deri as a minister regardless.
In the meantime, they stressed, Netanyahu and Deri would respect the High Court ruling. Deri was replaced by two fellow Shas ministers – Religious Services Minister Michael Malkieli in the Interior Ministry, and Minister in the Welfare and Social Affairs Ministry Yoav Ben-Tzur in the Health Ministry. Both of the appointments were temporary, for three months, and the coalition has already begun the legislative process to reappoint Deri by taking away the High Court’s power to intervene in ministerial appointments.
Is Deri still the acting minister?
But in the following weeks, something began to seem strange. The new ministers had not visited their new ministries, the directors-general admitted to meeting Deri in his home, and it quickly became apparent that Deri was still running the ministries from afar.
Shas is notoriously tight-lipped with the media, and while no pictures or other evidence of this were published, the party’s MKs did not even bother to deny it.
Kikar Hashabat reporter Yishai Cohen reported that he asked a Shas MK on Wednesday night, “Is it okay that there is no interior minister while we need to be preparing for an earthquake?”
The MK, who remained anonymous, answered, “Deri [working] from afar is worth over 10 ministers in any one ministry.”
Indeed, the Interior Ministry is critical in issues relating to earthquakes. The ministry is responsible for Tama 38 – the national renovation project to strengthen existing buildings against earthquakes – and is also responsible for cooperation with local authorities in emergencies.
Yet Malkieli has not yet stepped into the Interior Ministry since his appointment, Channel 12’s Yair Cherki reported on Wednesday, and senior Shas members told Cohen last week that it was “clear to everyone” that “Deri is the boss, he is running everything, and the [interim] ministers are simply rubber stamps in order to respect the High Court’s ruling.”
Malkieli outdid this in an interview on Radio Kol Chai on Monday.
“We need to receive what we deserve by law. We are not sorry for winning, nor for the hundreds of thousands of people who voted for us.
“We have a great general named Arye Deri – God gave him more perception and wisdom than others,” Malkieli said.
“We have a great general named Arye Deri – God gave him more perception and wisdom than others.”
Religious Services Minister Michael Malkieli
THE MOVEMENT for Quality Government in Israel, one of the most active civilian watchdogs against improper governance, was one of the organizations that appealed to the High Court against the initial decision to appoint Deri. The organization stepped in again and fired off two letters this week against the wily politician.
The first was a letter to the attorney-general, arguing that Deri was essentially violating the court ruling and should be tried for contempt of the court.
In a press statement that accompanied the letter, attorney Heidi Negev, head of the organization’s policy and legislation branch, said: “Former minister Deri continues to hold on, with all of his strength, to the reins of the ministries he was just fired from, despite the very clear ruling by the High Court that he was not even allowed to become a minister.
“The Israeli public deserves an honest and believable interior minister and health minister, who are not doing their jobs while cheating and disgracing the court.”
Negev addressed the second letter, on Wednesday, to the directors-general of the two ministries, Ronen Peretz and Moshe Bar Siman Tov, and warned them that by meeting with Deri they were risking a contempt of court lawsuit.
“Violating a High Court ruling by making Deri the de facto minister is contempt of court. If the professional-level workers in the Interior and Health ministries are indeed participating in such professional meetings [with Deri], they are also violating the ruling,” Negev said, adding that this was a “severe blow to the entire public and the social foundation of abiding by the law.”
Deri seems to be continuing life as usual and even enjoying the perks of working from home. But this likely will lead to a showdown with the High Court and open another front in the growing chaos in relations between the government, the opposition, the judicial system, the press, civil organizations and Israeli society in general.