when Mir Brachfeld hurries bochurim to the enlistment bureau

I have no idea why, in order to 'shmutz' about M.K. Yochanan Plesner or in order to accentuate the severity of his deeds, one had to go out to search for his father. Nu, really, is this the problem? That his father is a Goy?

Right, this is the truth. Olerik Plesner was born in Firenze as a first born to two brothers in a Catholic family of Danish origin. He met the mother, Tamar Libes, "by chance" when he came to Israel in order to plan the Hilton hotel. Together they left for Sri Lanka and married. There is no need to add that this marriage is not in line with halacha.

They say that a Goy finds it hard to love "cholent". For some reason his soul doesn't connect to this typical Jewish food. Maybe this is what they mean when they blame his lack of understanding in Torah and its learners – on his goyishe father.

On the other hand – his Jewish mother. On the third hand, the marriage between the two was not according to halacha. On the fourth side, it's not certain that one has to delve into the personal life of a politician when one comes to attack him. Attack the point itself.

A few days ago I got a phone call from a person who is considered very close to Plesner. "He wants to meet with Harav Shteinman", he said. If I arrange it, I'll get an exclusive review, he promised.

Those days, his committee – Yochanan's – had not yet been dismantled. His meetings with the representatives of the Hareidi world were a part of the routine of the committee's meetings, and his excitement over his "wonderful workings" was at a peak. Then he still believed that the Hareidim will say "thank you" for the gift he's giving them. Money, work. What not.

I didn't give it any chance that Hagry"l Shteinman – who had already foreseen the future when he instructed the Hareidi representatives not to be part of the committee's hearings – will agree to such a meeting. For one has to differentiate between meeting with the chairman of Knesset Ruvi Rivlin, a Jew who has a warm heart for tradition and the Torah world, and a meeting with a person who raged for over two years a sub-committee whose findings served as a digging shovel in the hands of Dorit Beinish when she came to revoke the Tal Law.

On Monday I met the person again. Nu, does Yochanan still want a meeting? I asked him out of curiosity. "No, indeed no," he answered.

And then, almost by the way, maybe in order to explain why not, he added another sentence: "This morning I talked to him, I told him that the Hareidi media criticized the fact that his father is Christian, non-Jewish. You know what he threw at me?" he said, "That David Hamelech was also the son of a non-Jew".

I was flabbergasted. Not only because his father is a non Jew. But just because of the comparison to David Hamelech, the great-grandson of Ruth the Moabite, who was converted properly, and the son of Yishai, about whom the Gemora testifies that he never transgressed in his life.

But never the less, from his point of view, it sounds like this – if Ruth the Moabite didn't convert according to Halacha, then Ovad, her son and the son of Boaz, is not Jewish. His wife, Adael, is Jewish, and therefore their son Yishai is certainly a Jew. But Yochanan's mother is also Jewish.

Long live the small differences. Ruth was converted halachicly, that's one. And two – she and Boaz, just like Ovad and Adael his wife, were not married in Sri Lanka.

The new Plesner conspiration

And this is still not the most important point. After all, Plesner is a politician, and he has to be judged as such.

The interesting point is that after Kadima's conspiracy which talked of a dream to place him at the head of the list as a copy of Bibi, this week a new conspiracy was born, according to which Olerik Plesner, the architect father, who worked in projects for the Jerusalem municipality even at the time of the late Teddy Kolek, was and still is a friend of Olmert.

The last is the one who put Yochanan the son into the Kadima list. He is also the one who will do everything in order to attach him to the list of "Yesh Atid" party of Yair Lapid. About Yair Lapid there is no need to tell how much he works in full harmony with Olmert, the friend of his father Tommy. Even before being acquitted on Tuesday.

How much honor Plesner gets in the media. Over the weekend his picture was spread on the heading of the Shabbos supplement in Yediot Achronot, as the hero of Israel who saved the nation from all its enemies upon the earth. Fossilized into a suit and tie, in his hand a rifle. Finally, Am Yisroel has someone to rely on…

Poor Netanyahu saw and got the message. If he says "no" to the man, the history (which is determined in the newspapers' editorials "who count") will never forgive him. And not a man like him, who is a sworn lover of history, will forego a line in Wikipedia or the future literature.

"On that Friday, so I head from one of the seniors of Shas, I felt the upheaval on my flesh. On Shabbos, Hagr"o Yosef was sad. And not in vain. Because a Tzaddik knows the soul of…"

In the background stood the ally, seemingly, the Kadima party, whose future was uncertain. Dying? Dead already? Can one revive it by certain means? Who knows.

From day to day the fragments of the opposition in the party are just more confused. On Tuesday, such a meeting of the opposition was supposed to take place. The future participants, M.K.'s Shlomo Mula, Yoel Hasson, Orit Zuaretz, Robert Tibayev, Nono Abeksaza and Nachman Shai. For some reason it was canceled, perhaps because the seventh didn't want to join. Maybe because it is still unclear what the reason for withdrawing will be. After all, who knows to say what the lot of the new Tal Law will be. Bad for Hareidim? Bad enough to take them with the wind towards the opposition?

Just to think of it that Netanyahu dreamed of an explosion with this party. It's nice of Elkin who diagnosed them when he said that they suffer of schizophrenia, and his recommendation for them to go for psychological treatment. So why doesn't his boss listen to him, and doesn't understand who the partners' with whom he chose to postpone the votes, are?

Israel Hasson, from hearsay, already got a formal approach from the "Avoda" party. He refused politely. To his mind, his party is still destined to rise upwards to the level of the votes threshold immediately after a "good" Tal Law will be passed. To his mind, of course.

About Atniel Shneller and Yaakov Edri they say that their four legs are already planted deep into the Likud party. Netanyahu would have liked to secure the future of Shaul Mofaz too. For that purpose (not only for this purpose, after all there is Ehud around as well) he is interested to prevent the meeting of the Likud conference, and is prepared to hear of ideas like his one-sided turnabout to the center.

The Likudniks get ready on scene

You should just know: very quietly votes are getting under way for the branches. In one of them, the Bnei Brak branch, the Hareidi members are getting ready to jump to influential positions. On the way, they are meeting with the Likudniks, shooting arrows of criticism and also getting promises for the future.

They had such a meeting, for example, with the Minister of Culture and Sport, Limor Livnat ("Why doesn't she understand that she has to give money to Hareidi culture as well? So what if she tells us that her father and grandfather were Rabbis"), with Yariv Levine ("Nice guy, smart, not sure how he could help the Hareidim"), just now with Silvan Shalom.

According to them, if only they will get stronger, they are the ones who could influence the Likud from inside ("See, we brought Yoav Kish, from the members of the Plesner committee, to the Ponevez Yeshiva, we are sure that it influenced him more than any speech of Gafni-Yishai; he is the one who promised us that the speakers at the Motzaei Shabbos demonstration won't talk against the Hareidi public, and he kept his word"), but this is what Moshe Feiglin told me on the interview too, and until today it's not sure if he managed to move Netanyahu by an inch from his thoughts and views.

He didn't even manage to prevent moving the settlers form their homes in the Ulpenah suburb. On the other hand, do our Hareidi politicians manage to change something?

Just as long as Olmert won't return

The one who tries to "fool" the Hareidi representatives is the ever lasting representative of the Prime Minister, the previous head of bureau (Nu, really) Natan Eshel. You won't believe what creative ideas pop up in his bright brain.

Firstly, he is making every effort to dissolve the alliance which formed lately between Yahadut Hatorah and Shas. He compliments this one, flatters that one, licks to this one, pleads with another one.

You can ask the deputy minister Eliezer Moses how he feels bad after Natan Eshel goes out of his bureau in the Ministry of Education. As if he is the most important person to the first bureau. Believe it or not, there is nothing like this feeling. And Eshel knows how to give plenty of it.

"You will stay, Yahadut Hatorah will withdraw, Gafni will stay in the financial committee, you will take care of them, they will take care of you" – these are just a few of his chosen sayings to convince. As long as one big Hareidi block won't withdraw.

To tell the truth, over the last days a crack (still narrow) has cracked in the wall of bragging and self confidence which has characterized the first bureau.

The surveys which complimented the chairman of the Avoda party Shelly Yechimovitch, the talks of the Hareidim about a possibility of joining her – all those changed the tones.

Suddenly I realized there are "nervous" songs of "one cadency they will fall into her net, let's see them crawling back to us next time, but then we won't look at them" and others. On Tuesday morning, after the acquittal of Ehud Olmert (in two sagas), a few hours after Gafni stood at the pulpit of the Knesset and complimented the best Prime Minister for the Hareidim (Olmert, not Bibi), the level of pride of the last probably dropped underneath the red line.

Olmert should not even think of coming back to politics. In such a case – if it's legally feasible, the Hareidim will surely prepare a red carpet for him, actually a golden bridge. All that Shelly Yechimovitch needs is to go up to that bridge, and the end of the Netanyahu government, to the joy of the demonstrators in the square of the Tel Aviv Museum, to the wellbeing of the demonstrators of the summer campaign.

To be on the safe side, and till it blows over, the Prime Minister prefers to hide in his bureau at the Prime Minister's office. It's hard to get in there before passing seven sections of security, and this is certainly not simple. This is not the Knesset to which every starting journalist could come in freely (and a commendation to the bureau of M.K. Michael Ben Ari who is a pro in giving approvals of Hachnassas Orchim), there is no bothering headache of the Knesset, parliamentary questions and other nagging. And thanks to the plaster-of-Paris and the vein which was torn, at least until the end of the parliamentary session. We'll meet again with all the naggers at the start of the winter session and then we'll deal with the problems.

Someone who really needs a connection with the first bureau, is forced to do so by means of interesting techniques. For example, the Minister of Education Gidon Sa'ar found a solution: SMS typed on his cell phone again and again to Gil Shefer (head of bureau), as well as to Tzvika Hauzer (secretary of government). "Champion of SMS's" he has already been called by someone.

If you are careful not to send SMS in front of one committee or the other, or even during a government sitting, it's OK. What's true, it's not certain that in Netanyahu's close proximity they will like this interesting channel of Shefer & Saar. But when Natan Eshel (or how he showed on Netanyahu's screen "The new Natan Eshel") is not really around, who will report?

Why give the state?

What about the longed for majority which is necessary for the new Tal Law, if and when it will reach the plenum?

The one who counted the fingers of the members of Yisrael Beiteinu party, was invited this week to listen to Avigdor Liberman, the deciding chairman, that this will not be. He and his friends will vote against the law, no matter what the view of the coalition will be. Who knows as well as him that for lack of another option, there will be a freedom of vote because of the Hareidim. So why not mount the wave?

The heads of the Likud still fool themselves that the MK's of the Ichud Haleumi will vote for the law. They probably didn't hear what I heard from MK's Michael Ben Ari ("If the Hareidi public won't buy Bamba or cottage cheese for one week, the market will collapse. The Hareidi public is after all the biggest tax payer. They should first carry out corrective discrimination; in all the big companies on the market, there is not even one Hareidi") and Uri Ariel.

There is no such case, they clarify.

M.K. Chaim Amsalem really wanted that this will fall on one vote. Then, he promises, there will be surprises.

Be sure that he will stretch Netanyahu's nerves just like the nerves of Eli Yishai, till they burst.

And then, at the last moment, he'll pull out his decision. I would bet that with all his criticism on the Hareidi public, he won't betray the Torah world. After all, he has a love of Torah in his heart, even if it's spiced with hatred for politicians who profess to represent it in the Knesset.

And what about the Arabs? "We'll vote with you," MK Achmad Tibi told me this week. Nu, it's clear, after all the law goes into the kishkes of the Israeli Arabs as well and volunteers them to forced service, which as far as they are concerned, is "a waste of two years".

"The sewerage is nothing great, the sidewalks are broken, the poverty is great, and we will waste such a long period of our lives on the state?" – they tell themselves.
The commentary will be done in the plenum, and if they won't promise them the earth, it's hard to see them supporting the law. And not because this is what Hagry"l Shteinman instructed them.

Even in the Likud there are those who admitted this week that "It's tempting to take the Arabs out of the law and get their support. After all, Yisrael Beiteinu in any case isn't going with us".

If you want to see a hint of a threat towards Liberman, you did so of your own responsibility. Moreover, the person who would manage to scare the chairman of Israel Beiteinu has not yet been created. Take out, bring in, warn, go wild – when he decides, even the unbeatable Elkin has lost out.

The Hareidim have a case

This week, a senior factor in the coalition has admitted that he understands the Hareidim. "They have a real case", he said. After all, they signed a coalition agreement with them.

On the other hand, he explained, there is a ruling of the Supreme Court which doesn't enable Netanyahu to keep this clause. There is a new political reality. The Hareidim have to understand. And whoever wanted to know, here is the summary of the agenda of the days which are coming upon us for the good (and Chas Veshalom for the bad).

The validity of the Tal Law runs out automatically on the 1st of August. There is not way the Supreme Court will prolong. It doesn't work this way, unless there will be someone who will turn to the Supreme Court in order to complain that the state isn't enforcing enlistment by means of coercion.

In such a case, the state will answer, logically, that is in the midst of a legal procedure, and the Supreme Court will be satisfied and will erase the petition.

If it won't be submitted, the law will come into force, a law of enlistment for all.
At this stage an effort is done by all who are involved (Bugi Yeelon and Yochanan Plesner, above them Natan Eshel, Ehud Barak and obviously Binyamin Netanyahu mixing strongly) to submit a law, which will be raised this coming Sunday at the committee of ministers for legislation, and from there to a quick mechanism for legislation.

On Sunday it will be raised in the plenum for a first calling, from there to a committee which the government will authorize to discuss the matter, in order to prepare the law for a second and third calling.

All this is true if Netanyahu has not prepared a rabbit which he will pull out at the right moment.

The majority, this time and for a change, is not certain in advance, and the chairman of the coalition, Zeev Elkin, will have to sweat properly.

Seemingly, the votes of Meretz, Avodah, Kadima, Habayit Hayehudi and Halikud are certain. But what in case there will be an opposition in Kadima which will cut off the votes of supporters just because the law is not "bad enough for the Hareidim"? And what in case the Avodah will decide to embarrass the government? After all, Yitzchak Buzhi Herzog has a law to dismiss the Knesset in his arsenal, and why shouldn't he make life hard for Netanyahu?

Don't forget that he is the man who threw them out ashamedly on "that" day to the opposition desert, and there is nothing sweeter than the moment of revenge.

There is no doubt that the next days, until the dismissal of the Knesset (formally, the last day is Wednesday before Tisha Be'av, in reality the discussions on that day will be schlepped out more and more, or even until Shabbos) will be full of surprises: spins, mistaken news, pieces of hearsay, and many conspiracies.

I've already made room in my diary for two full weeks, the invitations for Shabbos were canceled. But what is all this technical hardship in face of the real fear which dwells in the hearts of the Torah learners?

Today, more and more bochurim went up to buses in the Mir Brachfeld Yeshiva, on the way to the enlistment office, just in order to hurry and sign a postponement. For who knows what will be, first they sign and promise a year of quiet. By the way, even minors went on to the buses, those whose time hasn't yet come to enlist.

It's not certain if they accepted them at the office, or maybe they sent them home (to Yeshiva) to grow up a bit. After all you can be sure that even the army doesn't really know how to deal with the 1st of August and the fact that they are meant to automatically open their gates to thousands of Yeshiva bochurim who will start driving them crazy between Mincha and Maariv, between a Minyan in Ashkenazi to Sephardi accent, between Mehadrin Beit Yosef to Mehadrin Badatz Yerushalayim, between a Daf Hayomi to a night Shiur, without which you can't continue the next day.

'בחדרי' גם ברשתות החברתיות - הצטרפו!