An Orthodox religious party in Israel called Shas is threatening to quit Prime Minister Barak's government unless it gets more government money, free of the usual government rules, for a school system it runs in Israel. The Times opposes school vouchers in America, so, even given the differences between the American and Israeli systems, you might expect a Times editorial to oppose the attempt at a Shas shakedown. You would be wrong. In today's editorial on "Israel's Political Crisis," the Times writes that both Mr. Barak and Shas "need to find ways to bridge the remaining gaps and keep Shas inside the Barak coalition." This is at least the second time Shas has attempted such a shakedown, and at least the second time The Times has urged Mr. Barak to cave in. If the pattern holds, by the time a final agreement is reached between Israel and the Arabs, students in Shas schools will have facilities as posh as those at Andover and Exeter. We don't see why a peace deal between Israel and the Arabs is so important to America that we need to be urging Mr. Barak to cave in to this sort of political hostage-taking. One scrap of argument the Times offers in favor of Mr. Barak's caving in is that "Shas's constituency, mainly working class Jews whose families came to Israel from other Middle Eastern countries, is a large and important one. Only in recent years has it begun to be fairly represented in the Israeli political system." This is ridiculous. Israel has been a democracy since it was founded in 1948, and anyone who wants to vote is "fairly represented." Many of these same voters helped elect Menachem Begin as prime minister in the late 1970s. It is true that Shas has gained seats in Israel's parliament under a newly implemented electoral system that allows for direct election of the prime minister, but it hardly follows that the old system was unfair, any more than America's two-party system is unfair. Or maybe, in elections as in funding for private education, the Times editorialists hold Israel to a different standard than they do America.
An Intimate View of the Death House: The guilt of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg as atomic spies for the Soviet Union has now been established beyond a doubt by Soviet and American archival documents. Their actions helped an evil empire that oppressed millions of its own citizens, denying them freedom of press and of religion, sending dissenters to prison camps in the Gulag or murdering them after show trials. So, naturally, a Times feature on the front of today's Arts section portrays the Rosenbergs as loving parents who wrote sappy, adoring letters to their children and to each other. The story is about a new exhibit about Death Row at New York's Sing Sing prison. If you read past the jump, you can get a hint of some of the brutal crimes the prisoners were convicted of, but the story is generally, in Times fashion, more sympathetic to the criminals than to the crime victims. (The exception to this general rule, we will see, is when the crime takes place in Central Park or victimizes a group the Times thinks deserves special protection, such as gays or wealthy white women.) The victims of the Rosenbergs' crimes don't merit even a passing mention in the Times story.