Former Shas minister blames Deri for alienating voters as party drops to six seats

By103FMOCTOBER 29, 2026 17:19

Former Shas minister Shlomo Benizri criticized party leader Arye Deri over Shas's disappointing election results, saying the party had lost nearly half its Knesset seats and failed to address the issue of haredi (ultra-Orthodox) military conscription, in an interview with 103FM on Thursday.

With 97.3% of the votes counted, Shas had secured just six Knesset seats, prompting widespread disappointment within the party.

According to Benizri, "Shas itself was not clear. On the one hand, they went to a Knesset committee with a decision by the Council of Torah Sages to proceed with enlistment through an agreed-upon law. On the other hand, some of the rabbis spoke out sharply against enlistment."

Addressing Deri's responsibility for Shas's dismal election performance, Benizri said, "We lost almost 50% of our seats. This is something that is truly traumatic, a shock and a tremendous blow to our entire community."

"We need to do some soul-searching. I am against immediately calling for heads to roll because of an election result. The leader should have identified the problem as soon as it emerged. In other words, the conscription issue did not arise today. This was a process that should have been stopped. He lost the haredi public because the haredi public holds him responsible for failing to pass a conscription law or prevent all the decrees against the haredi community."

Benizri also criticized Shas's close political alignment with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"I have always argued that Shas's disaster is that we are to Netanyahu's right. As for Netanyahu, I don't see him solving any problems. He is going to solve more of his own problems than those of Shas. In my opinion, it hasn't dawned on him that the haredim are no longer so firmly in his pocket, and under certain circumstances now, with the left-wing parties, they might go with them."

"The Likud doesn't understand that Shas is not a satellite party of Likud. We are a party with our own principles, and the most important of them is the yeshiva students and the Torah world. The moment that is not accepted, Likud is simply pushing them toward the left and toward making different decisions."

He also took a swipe at the prime minister, saying, "I can say one thing about the left: When they make promises, they keep them. With them, a word is a word."

'Deri is a millstone around Shas's neck'

Meanwhile, media commentator Barak Seri wrote on X that Deri bore responsibility for Shas's electoral losses.

"From what appears to be emerging at this moment, Shas is dropping to six seats, and this is a complete, disgraceful, enormous failure by one man: Arye Deri. He drove all the traditional voters away from Shas because of his statements that he is proud of his three draft-dodging grandsons; because of bizarre interviews in which he said that in the next government he would demand 'tens of billions for the haredim and ten government ministries that would serve the haredi public'; his statements to haredim after the horrific massacre that 'you must not even think about enlisting in the IDF'; and statements such as 'conscription is the IDF's problem, let them deal with it themselves.'"

"In the previous elections in 2022, Shas won 11 seats, five and a half of which came from the traditional public, people who served in the IDF and whose children enlist in the military. For these people, the IDF is a sacred value. All those seats went to Likud. Shas has remained a Lithuanian haredi party that lost many votes even in haredi cities and neighborhoods because of their anger that it failed to secure the passage of a conscription law."

Seri concluded with a sharp attack on Deri and those close to him.

"Deri failed. Deri is a millstone around Shas's neck, and all those associates who are now saying he is considering resigning are bluffing. These are threats in the style of former Egyptian president Nasser, who, after the defeat by Israel in the Six Day War, threatened to resign but was actually saying: I don't want to resign, please hold me back."

Follow us on Google

---