Senior Shas rabbi urges Eisenkot to join Netanyahu in rotation government with Haredi parties, Religious Zionism

Rabbi Moshe Maya, a senior member of Shas’s ruling Council of Torah Sages, urges Yashar chairman Gadi Eisenkot to join Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a rotation government, with Haredi parties joining the coalition.

“The only solution is a unity government, and this is Eisenkot’s real moment of truth,” Maya tells the ultra-Orthodox newspaper Mishpacha.

He says Eisenkot should avoid the “radical left” and agree to a rotation premiership with Netanyahu. Likud and Yashar would have a combined 48 seats and Maya says that ultra-Orthodox parties Shas and United Torah Judaism, alongside the Religious Zionism party, which together hold 19, would push them to a majority government.

Maya’s proposal comes after Shas fell from 11 seats to six in last week’s election, its worst result since 1992. The party has recommended Netanyahu as the next prime minister in its consultation with President Isaac Herzog.

Maya attributes Shas’s electoral losses to a drop in support among traditional voters amid criticism in the media of the party’s opposition to ultra-Orthodox military enlistment.

“Many people who had voted for Shas in the past bought the media’s poisonous messages against yeshiva students,” he says, adding that some traditional right-wing voters chose Likud instead.