Report: Shas spiritual leader urging people not to vote for party, seeks downfall of right-wing government

Former chief rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, one of the spiritual leaders of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, is urging associates and students not to vote for the party in the upcoming election, arguing the hard-right government must be brought down, Haaretz reports.

Citing several sources who spoke to the rabbi, the newspaper quotes Yosef as saying: “The time has come for us to bring down the right. We’ll get nothing from the right. Only with the left can we reach agreements.”

One student tells Haaretz: “Rabbi Yosef demanded that I promise him I would not vote for Shas, that I ask my family not to vote for the party, and that I publicize his request to anyone I could.”

Another source says, “He doesn’t even hide it. [Shas leader Aryeh] Deri also knows that Rabbi Yitzhak is asking people not to vote for the party.”

They add: “The moment this is made public, he will of course deny it, but in conversations at home, he says it clearly.”

Another student says: “He told me, ‘Netanyahu and the Religious Zionism [party] hate us, but the left respects us. The left just wants power and doesn’t want to hurt us. We can work with them.'”

The report says that after Yosef recently called Netanyahu “a liar” and spoke well of Yashar party chief Gadi Eisenkot, he was strongly reprimanded by Deri.

“The rabbi told me that Deri had screamed at him,” a student recounts. “He said to me, ‘Did you see that? A political operator yelling at a rabbi. Where is the respect for Torah?’ The rabbi was very hurt by it.”

A spokesman for Yosef denies the report. “It never happened,” he says. “It is unfortunate that there are people from within our own ranks spreading falsehoods in the rabbi’s name with the aim of sowing division.”