Yated Ne'eman, the daily of Degel HaTorah, published an unprecedented attack Tuesday morning on Finance Minister and Religious Zionism chairman Bezalel Smotrich, following his remarks against the Lithuanian leader, rosh yeshiva HaGaon Rav Dov Lando shlita.
The editorial presents Smotrich as having crossed every red line in Israeli politics. "'Would that I had a talmid chacham and I would bite him like a donkey' - this hollow taunt seemed to echo last night from the stage of the Arutz Sheva conference," the sharp editorial opens, "when Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich opened his mouth against the eyes of the generation shlita. A king of ingrates -that is the proper title for one who knew how to exploit the coalition partnership with the chareidi public when it served his needs."
The paper charges that the Finance Minister used chareidi support as long as it served the religious-Zionist agenda, and is now trying to reap political capital at the expense of the generation's leaders: "When he needed the chareidi finger, he knew exactly where to find it. When he seeks the next vote, he is already prepared to trample on the hand that was extended to him."
"Worse than the British Mandate"
The editorial compares the battle against the Torah world to historical decrees: "To err is forgivable. To mislead is his problem. Even ideological dispute is part of public reality. But to open one's mouth against the gedolei hador — that is already one step too far. The British Mandate government in Eretz Yisrael did not wage war against the yeshiva world the way Smotrich and his colleagues are waging it in the name of 'redemption'. Even Arab rule did not!"
The editorial continues: "Smotrich, who even if he studied all his days would not reach the edge of what a cheder child knows, summons the audacity to speak with arrogance toward gedolei Yisrael, and after all this, still has the nerve to speak in the name of 'Gush Emunim'. What redemption is there in a Zionism that persecutes what is most precious and holy to the Jewish people, and seeks to present itself as 'the beginning of our redemption', when its actions are the beginning of the collapse of our redemption?"
Beyond the Torah-based and ideological protest, the editorial addresses Degel HaTorah's decision to declare it is not part of the right-wing bloc: "True, because of circumstances we lived in a shared house, but Smotrich has now marked a warning notice on the house's deed. Dangerous structure.
"We are neither right nor left, but the braying of the donkey explained well why the forced yet long-standing connection has unraveled and everything has opened anew. Why there is a right-wing bloc hostile to Torah and a left-wing bloc hostile to Torah and we are a bloc unto ourselves: a bloc of Torah!"
