Adina Bar-Shalom rules out election run, out of ‘responsibility toward voters’

Ahi Yisraeli, the party founded by Adina Bar-Shalom, the daughter of the Shas party’s late spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, on Tuesday ruled out a run in April’s national elections.”

“In light of the political reality that has developed in recent days and out of responsibility to our voters, the party council decided not to run in the elections for the 21st Knesset,” the party said in a statement.

“Ahi Yisraeli will continue to promote its values, headed by a respectful and unifying discourse that will allow us to discuss disputes by means of clarifying and formulating joint agreements and giving room to the existing differences in Israeli society,” the party announced.

“We are committed to continuing to work to realize the ideas of the party and the work plan we have written in recent years in the fields of education, society, health and coexistence,” the statement read.

Last week the party was putting out feelers to unite with Benny Gantz’s Israel Resilience prior to its merger with Yesh Atid, the Walla news site reported, and had said it would run in the elections alone or after having united with another party.

The party was founded by Bar-Shalom, who has accused Shas’s political chief, Interior Minister Aryeh Deri, of abandoning her father’s legacy. Ultra-Orthodox parties have an explicit ban on allowing women candidates to run on their party lists.

“I trusted in him and thought he was loyal to father’s legacy. I gave him my complete trust,” she said last year.

But Deri failed to help her technical college for Haredi women when it faced financial difficulties, she claimed. “He didn’t act to ensure it survived. I’m very, very hurt by that.”

Asked if “Shas was history” by an audience member at an event last March, Bar-Shalom replied, “If it were up to me, then yes.”

Deri, she added, had “changed a lot since he went to prison.” Before his prison term, “he used to know how to mediate and bridge different worlds” within Israeli society. “It’s a shame he went to prison and was ruined.”

Deri served 22 months in prison from 2000 to 2002 for a bribery conviction, and is currently under investigation for fresh graft suspicions.

She said women could “make use of politics even without being a member of Knesset.”

Bar-Shalom and Deri have clashed in the past, including over Deri’s 2015 promise to establish a women’s council in the party that would give women a say, a promise that never materialized.

In December, Bar-Shalom sued Rabbi David Benizri, a prominent Shas supporter, for defaming her, listing the adjective “Reform” among the slights.