Unholy Ministry

Another blow for Begin

It is a high case of government corruption in a country that takes pride in its standards of integrity in public office. As a prelude to a formal indictment, Attorney General Yitzhak Zamir last week asked Israel's parliament, the Knesset, to lift the parliamentary immunity of Aharon Abuhatzeira, 42, the Minister of Religious Affairs. That will clear the way for Zamir to press bribery charges against Abuhatzeira; if convicted, he could be sentenced to seven years in prison.

Since July, Israeli police have been investigating allegations that Abuhatzeira, in 1978 and 1979, received 52,500 Israeli shekels (then worth about $15,000) in kickbacks from three Tel Aviv religious institutions. The bribes were allegedly for directing ministerial funds to yeshivot (religious schools) that did not in fact exist. As the storm broke over his head, Abuhatzeira appeared on Israeli television and cockily denounced the stories as "provocation and a libel."

The Abuhatzeira affair is a major embarrassment to the battered government of Prime Minister Menachem Begin, which last month narrowly survived a motion of no confidence. The accused Minister belongs to the National Religious Party, whose twelve Knesset votes are essential to the survival of Begin's coalition. The charges against Abuhatzeira have renewed tensions between the country's politically and culturally dominant Ashkenazi Jews, of European background, and the Sephardic Jews, from the Middle East, the Balkans and North Africa. Abuhatzeira is from the Sephardic community, which sometimes feels it is a second-class society within Israel. Wrote Nissim Gaon, president of the World Sephardi Federation, to the Jerusalem Post: "The feeling that there are two societies, separate and unequal, has reached a psychological boiling point."

Despite the probability that Abuhatzeira would be indicted, Begin refused to ask him to take a leave of absence from the ministry. Nonetheless, Begin shares the view of most Israelis, that justice must be done. At stake is an impressive level of public honesty that has brought down more powerful figures than Abuhatzeira for less serious offenses. In April 1977, for example, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was forced to resign after admitting that he and his wife had had a small but illegal U.S.-dollar bank account in Washington while he served as Israel's Ambassador to the U.S.

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