Aryeh Deri says October 7 ‘saved the nation of Israel,’ avoiding deadlier attack and exposing Iran

Shas chairman MK Aryeh Deri says in a TV interview that the events of October 7, 2023 “saved the nation of Israel.”

“I see in this what the Prophet Isaiah said in his prophecy — ‘For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with great compassion will I gather thee,'” the Sephardic ultra-Orthodox lawmaker tells right-wing Channel 14’s “The Patriots,” in remarks quoted by Haaretz.

“For a truly small moment, on October 7, God forsook us. We took an awful blow, that until now we haven’t recovered from. So many casualties, we still have hostages there — but it saved the nation of Israel that the former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the wicked and depraved, decided to go first and not to wait for the whole bloc,” Deri says, apparently referring to other Iranian proxies, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, who might have joined in such an attack.

Hezbollah opened fire on Israel on October 8, 2023, the day after Hamas invaded — but did not join the Gaza-based terror group in the attack itself, and did not send its ground fighters into Israel, as it had long trained to do.

“Secondly, all of a sudden we found out — and the nation of Israel and the whole world found out — what Iran is. The Iranians lost all their proxies and were left exposed,” Deri says.

“God performed one more big miracle: that Trump was elected,” he continues. “Without October 7, without Trump, and without Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — we wouldn’t have been able to do it,” he says, referring to the ongoing campaign against Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

Deri tells Channel 14 that, in recent months, the plans for attacking Iran were kept top secret.

“The prime minister led the army and the Mossad little by little. Nothing was impossible for him. They met three or four times a week, over months, and planned this operation,” Deri says, noting that the meetings occurred after Netanyahu would spend eight hours testifying in his ongoing corruption trial.