Deri warns Gantz and Lapid will ‘divide the Western Wall’

Aryeh Deri, leader of the Haredi party Shas, warns supporters at a rally in the hardscrabble southern town of Ofakim that the centrist Blue and White alliance led by Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid will “divide the Western Wall” and “turn Shabbat into just another workday.”

“Forget the nice words you will hear over the next month from Lapid’s people, that they love Haredim,” Deri says. “Everyone here knows how much damage they did, how much they fought against Judaism. They will turn Shabbat into just another workday.”

He charges that Blue and White, an alliance between Gantz’s Israel Resilience party and Lapid’s Yesh Atid, “was established in a villa in [the wealthy town of] Savyon, not in [the working-class towns of] Ofakim, Netivot or Kiryat Shmona. They don’t care about the periphery.”

Deri urges right-wing Likud voters to vote Shas instead. “Shas is Likud’s mezuzah, a strong Shas will be a daily reminder of what it means to be a Jewish state,” he says. “We remind them what the Shabbat table is, and what Shabbat synagogue prayers are.”