Israel Who Was That Bearded Man?

Politics is often called the art of the possible. But Israel is rapidly transforming politics into the art of the improbable -- if not the downright ridiculous. Ever since the collapse of Israel's coalition government on March 15, Labor leader Shimon Peres has been scrambling to put together a new government without his party's nemesis, the conservative Likud bloc. Early last week Peres appeared to have sewn up 61 of the Knesset's 120 votes. But on Wednesday two Deputies of the religious party Agudat Yisrael backed out of a signed agreement, leaving Peres two votes short of a majority.

What made this latest twist so extraordinary is that the defection was manufactured by Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, 88, who heads the ultra-Orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch movement from his home in Brooklyn, N.Y., and has never been to Israel. On Sunday, Agudat Deputy Avraham Verdiger phoned the spiritual leader's office for political guidance. The rabbi's spokesmen implied that this was the first contact between Jerusalem and Brooklyn. Others familiar with Schneerson's modus operandi say that a message had already been transmitted from Brooklyn making plain the rabbi's desire to derail Peres.

Either way, once Verdiger and fellow Deputy Eliezer Mizrahi learned that Schneerson continued to oppose any territorial concessions, a position favored by Labor and opposed by Likud, they backed away from their support of Peres. "It's a disgrace; it's completely disgusting," said Rabbi Allan Nadler of Montreal, who has written extensively about the Lubavitchers. "Rabbis of all the branches have been calling to express their outrage."