This is the mission of Shas... to care for the weaker layers of society, and it really doesn't matter what their names are...
Chairman of the Sephardic religious Shas party Eli Yishai said Saturday night that "If someone thinks to attack me and call me a blackmailer because I struggled for families with three children so that they could stand up under the burden of their monthly expenses — then I carry that title with abundant dignity."
Yishai was responding to the collapse of Tzipi Livni's coalition negotiations. Several politicians blamed Shas for "blackmailing" Livni by demanding too much money for child supplements to large families, or else not joining the coalition.
"It causes me stress that there is still anyone who has not understood that this is the mission of Shas," said Yishai, "and the reason that all the Shas members were sent to the Knesset by instruction of the respected Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, he should live and be well— to care for the weaker layers of society. "It really doesn't matter what their names are: Abutbul [a Moroccan Sephardic name], Yaakobovich [Jacobowitz- an Ashkenazic name], or Ziv [the ancestry of the name is less clear]…
"All through the talks Shas's negotiating staff emphasized that Shas could not compromise if there would not be a real development in the matter of family support… I told PM-designate Minister Livni that we needed to go with a social government, I emphasized that this was not [merely] an election phrase, it had to be material.