Amid dispute on Haredi draft law, Shas accuses Edelstein of plotting to oust Netanyahu in wake of Oct. 7

By Sam Sokol 15 July 2025, 6:39 pm

Edit

Sam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"

Chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Yuli Edelstein, delivers a statement to the media on legislation to regulate Haredi yeshiva students' enlistment to the military, at the Knesset in Jerusalem, July 15, 2025. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Following Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Yuli Edelstein’s statement that legislation regulating Haredi conscription without effective sanctions would “not be a conscription law, but a bluff law,” the ultra-Orthodox Shas party accuses Edelstein of having plotted to depose Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following October 7.

Several Hebrew media outlets quoted unnamed party officials as alleging that “in the days after October 7, while Israel was fighting for its life, Edelstein was engaged in a coup attempt designed to make him prime minister.”

“High-ranking people came to [Shas chairman Aryeh] Deri’s house again and again, saying that Edelstein and [Opposition Leader Yair] Lapid were coordinating on a no-confidence motion in which the opposition would install Edelstein in place of Netanyahu,” the officials claimed.

“They offered extremely tempting offers so that Shas would join the move and give him the necessary votes. These demands were rejected out of hand…just as he acted then only in his own best interests and not in the best interests of the state and the army, he is [also] doing so now.”

In response, officials of Lapid’s party, Yesh Atid, stated that it was “very impressive to us that for a year and eight months Deri kept such dramatic proposals secret and only now suddenly he remembered them in a miraculous way.”

“Of course, they never existed.”

In a separate statement apparently backing Edelstein, Lapid declares that “a conscription law without effective and immediate sanctions is not a law. There is currently a law, and it is simple and fair: no discrimination between blood and blood, conscription for all.”