From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, April 22, 2025
Shas MK in retort to Smotrich: Hostages ‘must come before everything else’
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. 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"
Shas MK Yinon Azoulay joins the chorus of ultra-Orthodox coalition lawmakers pushing back against Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich for stating that “returning the hostages is not the most important thing” compared to defeating the Hamas terror group.
Speaking with Radio Kol Hai this morning, Azoulay said that there was an obligation “to make every effort for the hostages,” who he insisted “must come before everything else.”
During a radio interview on Monday morning, Smotrich argued that returning the hostages “is obviously a very important goal, but if you want to destroy Hamas so that there can’t be another October 7, you need to understand that there can’t be a situation where Hamas remains in Gaza.”
On Monday evening, Deputy Transportation Minister Uri Maklev accused Smotrich of harming the families of the hostages and said it was impossible to “remain silent” in the face of efforts to make the hostages’ return a “secondary” priority.
In a statement, Maklev also condemned Smotrich for engaging in “extremist” rhetoric that “causes division and strengthens polarization” and slammed his Religious Zionism party’s members for “defiantly ascending the Temple Mount.”
United Torah Judaism MK Mosher Gafni, meanwhile, compared Smotrich to the Sicarii of the Second Temple period, a group of zealots for whom “the national issue was more important than human life.”
Smotrich in response launched a fierce attack on Gafni, saying that only someone who still holds a “diaspora mindset” and doesn’t believe that the State of Israel is the rightful “return to Zion” is capable of “comparing the current reality to the period of the destruction of the Second Temple.”
In a tweet, Religious Zionism MK Ohad Tal sniped at the ultra-Orthodox lawmakers’ public position on military issues, as three have pushed hard for a bill exempting yeshiva students from military service.
“Reservist generals Yinon Azoulay, Uri Maklev, and Moshe Gafni, they’re waiting for you at the Bakum [military induction base],” he wrote.
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