If Elie Wiesel now wants to run a full page ad in Maariv, I think I can get him a good price: $10,000-$20,000. It’s a tabloid, however, so he’ll have to reformat his Washington Post ad on Jerusalem.
On a more serious note, this is a potentially significant report that should be handled with care. Ben Caspit has a history of sacrificing precision for the sake of sensation and the source, Peres, is an incurable optimist, to put it mildly. Not that one should attach to much value to Eli Yishai’s denial either.
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef supports halting construction in Jerusalem
Ben Caspit, Maariv, April 22 2010 [page 6 with front page headline | Hebrew online original here]
Zio=Nazi Rabbi Ovadia YosefShas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef believes that Israel must rebuild its relationship with the US administration at any price, even if this means stopping to build in Jerusalem.
This emerges from the details of a talk that Rabbi Ovadia Yosef held with President Shimon Peres about three weeks ago. Sources who learned the details of the talk told Ma’ariv yesterday that Rabbi Ovadia Yosef used very clear and sharp language, and this included an explicit statement supporting a temporary halt to construction in Jerusalem.
The meeting between Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and President Peres took place on Friday morning almost three weeks ago, in the framework of Peres’s traditional visits to important leaders on the intermediate days of Passover. In the course of the meeting, Peres reviewed for Rabbi Ovadia Yosef the state of relations between Israel and the US, the depth of the crisis and its harsh ramifications for Israel’s situation and standing.
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, say people who were at the meeting, took it hard. Yosef said, “everything must be done to work things out with the Americans, we must pay any price to rebuild the relationship, we must not provoke the nations and kingdoms of the world,” and more in the same vein.
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef further said that it is possible to stop construction in Jerusalem for a time and to focus construction efforts in other areas such as central Israel, and that nothing would happen if we started building in Jerusalem again in a few years, after the crisis had passed.
When Peres described for him the compromise proposal (which Peres raised to Netanyahu), whereby Israel would declare a complete construction halt in Jerusalem’s Arab neighborhoods, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef also expressed support for this proposal.
Peres, the sources say, pointed out that Netanyahu also agreed to this proposal but refused to declare so publicly.
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef’s statements reveal a situation in Shas in which the student, i.e., Eli Yishai, is more extreme than his mentor, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. In response to Ma’ariv’s question, Eli Yishai said yesterday, “this never happened.”
The President’s Residence had no comment. The transcript of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef’s statement was checked and cross referenced, among others, with people who spoke with Rabbi Ovadia Yosef after Peres’s visit. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef confirmed them.
