""This is not a terrible blow": Shari Roth and Yehuda Avidan on Deri's plea deal

December 21, 2021   

Matti Tochfeld: Shas Chairman Aryeh Deri will probably resign from the Knesset in exchange for a lenient plea deal. Yehuda, can you confirm that such a plea deal is indeed on the table for signing? Avidan: Look, this thing has been on the table for a long time, even though neither Aryeh nor Mandelblit are currently closed on anything. There is no doubt that after the leaks in which we heard Mandelblit say that there is no mouse, no rat, and nothing, it makes sense that they want to reach a plea deal on the tax issue. Listen, I don't know a person who, after 6 years of such a torture trial, where we know that 98 percent of those in the country who come to trial are convicted, when it is certain that there is no court of justice here that can do justice to them, I can understand his heart. It's hard for us to think that he will have to resign, but he will remain the chairman of Shas, he will continue to lead the Shas movement, and it doesn't matter where. Anyone who knows the Shas movement and Aryeh Deri understands that if it were up to him, if it weren't for the opposition issue he wanted to form, he would have wanted to resign from the Knesset at the beginning of the term and concentrate on local and municipal affairs and everything. From our perspective, this is something that hurts, but it's impossible not to understand it. I really hope that everyone will understand that enough with this torture, you can't take him as a victim in order to bring down the right-wing camp. And that's the goal, everyone understands that, this thing won't work. Matti Tochfeld: Minister, even the last time when Aryeh Deri was forced to leave the position, it was following a criminal conviction and then he also lost the party leadership. This time it won't happen, there's no scenario for it to happen, right? Minister: First of all, you say 'also' about the last time. There was no criminal conviction here this time, and we are talking, remember, about tax offenses that have become a national sport in the State of Israel. Therefore, these offenses will not be able to affect his public visibility either. Because in the State of Israel there is a national sport of not wearing a mask, and there is a national sport of evading taxes, not that I am justifying it, God forbid, I am just saying that it is something that the average Israeli looks at with equanimity. And again, it is not that anyone is saying that it has been proven, there was no trial. When: He will be the leader of a party, when he is neither a member of Knesset nor a minister, the party is in the opposition, how will that function? How do you see his leadership continuing? Sari: You ask about the political constellation, and the situation of Shas today is completely different. It's no secret, and his opponents have also repeated it all the time, and now it will be used to their detriment - they said that Shas today is just a Shas of one person who leads it. And I think that when Rabbi Ovadia zt"l handed over the leadership to him, this was part of the considerations that were before his eyes. He already knew that he was weakening, knew that his day would come, and in essence he said: I need someone who can lead the party even without the rabbi's back. During Eli Yishai's time and also during the beginning of Aryeh Deri's tenure, in his first term, the rabbi was the one on whose shoulders the party stood. After the rabbi's passing, in the years when Aryeh Deri led the party, it actually leaned and relied on him. He is the one who makes the decisions and his critics will even tell you, makes the decisions without consulting enough with rabbis. I'm not saying that's how he is, I'm just saying that it can help him control the party from the outside. I don't see any scenario where someone is going to stage a coup there, it's about the same as the scenario where Yesh Atid puts up a candidate against Yair Lapid. That won't happen, Aryeh Deri is leading the party with a strong hand. Even if the High Court doesn't allow him to be a minister, meaning an MK, he can be one because there's no question of disgrace at the moment if he goes for the plea deal, and anyway he can be an MK in the next term. If the question of whether he can serve as a minister comes up before the High Court, they might not grant it, because last time they also said it was all nonsense. But he might not even put it to the test in the High Court. He doesn't have to be a minister. As Avidan said, he'll want to get involved in the field, get the people excited, acquire more voters, maybe also work on the core of the Sderot restaurant and bring this traditional audience back to Shas, bring it back home. He'll have enough things to do, while he can also run the party remotely. Shas MKs today are very united, very obedient to him, and also appreciate him, thinking that he knows how to lead the party correctly. I don't see, say, Malchieli, Azoulay, Arbel, Margi, no matter who serves as interior ministers, I don't see them taking any step without asking Aryeh or without his encouragement from above. So he doesn't have to do this annoying job of sitting in some office with cups of coffee and a cigarette. He can sit at home, go on field trips and run the party from the outside. This isn't a terrible blow, especially since it's about tax matters, so it's not an image blow either. Yehuda: I want to mention two things that are different from last time: One - in the previous High Court hearing, not 20 years had passed since then, when the charge was expunged, there was no possibility of not discussing or talking about the previous offense, and what will be before the High Court is only the tax offense, which is something that is commonplace in everyday life, that everyone without exception receives a ransom and no one tries to disgrace or do anything. So if Aryeh wants to be appointed minister, it will be impossible to discuss all the previous offenses and other things. Second point, I must say that Shas is different from the past, in all the recent years you haven't heard any counter-briefings, you haven't heard any factions, you haven't heard any wars. I think the Shas movement has never been as cohesive as it is now, and this is certainly attributable to Aryeh's leadership, who knew how to unite the ranks of both activists and MKs. So this thing, and Shari was good at saying this, there is no challenge to his leadership here. Let's get into proportions, this is a tax offense that would be at the lowest level of offenses. I think Aria now wants to resign, his departure has long been on the agenda, he is not leaving the party, he is leaving the Knesset and continuing to be a full-time party chairman. Let's remember that the last time he was a party chairman outside the Knesset, the Knesset also made a room available to him in the Knesset, and I mean Avi Gabbay, the chairman of the Labor Party, so that it would be a full-time job.