Amnon Lorch
Photo: Eugene Weisberg
Yishai should be ashamed
Op-ed: Political link between religion and state among reasons for grave blaze disaster
Interior Minister and Shas Chairman Eli Yishai regularly and stubbornly invests immense energy in boosting the rate of IDF draft-dodging, preventing conversions not monitored by his camp, and securing funding sources for yeshiva students who have no job or profession.
The grim state of Israel's firefighting services is no secret. Reports upon reports, complied by the state comptroller, local authority comptrollers, various types of committees, the Firefighting Commission, and newspaper articles that follow every medium-sized fire prompted quite a few government decisions – which were not implemented, as is customary around here.
Had this omnipotent minister used little of his power to advance the issues pertaining to his ministry - which is in charge of both local authorities and firefighting services - in order to ensure our fire brigades meet an appropriate bar, there would be more happy people in the State of Israel today.
Haredi View
Menachem Gsheid
Op-ed: Fire disaster result of government structure; Israel needs to adopt US model
The important thing is that the newspapers wrote about it. The man in charge of executing most of these decisions is Interior Minister Eli Yishai.
The political link between religion and state is among the reasons that brought this grave disaster upon us; a disaster produced by politicians who care about sectarian rather than national affairs. These people are by definition not allowed to exercise judgment as they operate in line with the orders of rabbis who did not engage in core studies, thereby connecting the 21st Century Israel to Jewish tradition in line with their own interpretations.
And what will they rule about the actions of the interior minister, who is only subjected to them and to the laws of the Torah?
The people of Israel's history is replete with prophets of catastrophe, including some who were right on occasion, yet it is devoid of people who assumed responsibility for failures that took place under their watch and prompted their own demise.
For that reason, there is no chance that the Torah sages council would order Eli Yishai to quit, as the gentiles tend to do, and Yishai would not be quitting on his own accord, as he is the rabbis' emissary and has no will of his own. And so, only the shame will remain
Amnon Lorch is a parter in the law firm of Yigal Arnon and Co.
