Election czar orders Shas to remove ad claiming troops support Haredi party

The ultra-Orthodox Shas party was ordered on Sunday to remove a campaign video published a day earlier that featured an IDF soldier, seemingly violating a ban on using images of security forces in election propaganda.

Following a complaint filed by Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party, Central Elections Committee chairman Justice Noam Sohlberg issued an interim order requiring Shas chairman Aryeh Deri to take down the video in question and gave Deri two days to respond to the petition.

The video — an apparent bid to hold onto moderate voters turned off by the party’s hardline stance against IDF conscription of ultra-Orthodox men — features a religious family waiting for their son to arrive home from the army for Shabbat dinner. As the young soldier runs in, he is hugged by his father and brother, a full-time yeshiva student. A message comes up on the screen claiming that “more than 30,000 conscripts and career soldiers voted for Shas in the last election.”

“One son studies in a yeshiva, and his brother serves in the IDF, each contributing to the people of Israel in their own way,” the party said in a statement released with the video on Saturday night. “This is the story of the Shas family: faith, tradition, unity and love of Israel. Torah students and IDF soldiers, we are all one family.”

The claim of 30,000 soldiers voting for Shas is unsubstantiated. It is based on the counting of the “double envelopes” that contain the votes of those who were not able cast ballots at the voting stations near their home. These are usually counted after the rest of the votes nationwide have been counted, and include the votes of soldiers. However, the double envelopes are also used by other security forces, as well as hospital patients and workers, diplomats and envoys abroad, prisoners and detainees, as well as people with disabilities who voted at accessible ballot stations.

New Shas campaign ad seems intent on fixing its hardline anti-conscription efforts' effect on its more traditional, Zionist voters pic.twitter.com/MKXPLBNy3j

— Sam Sokol (@SamuelSokol) August 22, 2026

Writing to Shas, an attorney for the Yashar party argued that the ad violated the rules of electoral campaigns.

“This video is not merely election propaganda made in a manner ‘likely to create the impression that the Israel Defense Forces identifies with a party,’ but the claim is made explicitly,” the letter stated. “It is deeply outrageous that Shas chose to launch its campaign with an advertisement featuring IDF soldiers after working for three years of war to pass a draft evasion law and fully prioritizing those who chose not to serve.”

The soldier is not wearing a standard-issue IDF uniform in the video, but he is dressed in army green, carrying a military rifle and clearly intended to be identified as an Israeli soldier.

Shas initially refused to take down the campaign video, asserting that “no IDF symbols were used whatsoever” in the ad: “It depicts a family member returning home from base in civilian clothes to refute false propaganda, including from Eisenkot and his party, suggesting that Shas supports draft evasion.”

By Sunday afternoon, the party had removed the video from its online platforms and issued a statement slamming Sohlberg for the decision.

“It is unsurprising that Judge Sohlberg rushed to comply with the left-wing party led by Eisenkot and disqualified a Shas video that contains no IDF symbols or elements. The left constantly spreads propaganda against Shas on the draft issue, but when Shas presents the truth, there is immediate intervention,” the party said in a statement.

The Central Elections Committee recently ordered both Eisenkot and B’Yachad party chairman Naftali Bennett to take down election videos that featured soldiers.

“The legal persecution against the right, traditionalists, and the religiously observant is no longer surprising. You can delete a video, but you cannot delete the hundreds of thousands of families who support Shas.”

The campaign video appeared to stand in stark contrast to Shas’s actions in recent years, with the party at the forefront of efforts to enshrine legislation that would grant an almost complete exemption from military service to ultra-Orthodox men.

Shas largely represents ultra-Orthodox Jews of Middle Eastern and North African extraction, but also traditional Mizrahi families. The party is reportedly concerned that these latter voters, upset over the party’s hardline stance on the draft issue, will defect to other parties, including Yashar.

Last Thursday, during a discussion aimed at patching up a public rift with chairman Aryeh Deri, Shas spiritual leader and former chief rabbi Yitzhak Yosef blessed the troops, calling them “messengers of the Holy One, Blessed be He” in a video released by a party spokesman.

Yosef himself has engaged in years of harsh anti-conscription rhetoric, including calling on yeshiva students to flush draft orders down the toilet and threatening a mass exodus of Haredi Jews from the country should the government arrest yeshiva students for draft evasion.

He has also blamed the deaths of IDF troops in Gaza on Haredi yeshiva students’ insufficient Torah study, called a fellow rabbi and bereaved father of a slain soldier a heretic for advocating Haredi conscription, and called June’s US-Iran deal a divine punishment for Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara’s efforts to crack down on draft dodgers.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.