From the Liveblog of
Saturday, August 22, 2026
Shas party puts out campaign video featuring IDF soldier coming home to ultra-Orthodox family, amid its efforts to enshrine Haredi draft exemption
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleSam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. 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"
In an apparent bid to hold onto moderate voters turned off by its hardline stance on IDF conscription, the ultra-Orthodox Shas party releases a campaign video featuring a family waiting for their son to arrive home from the army for Shabbat dinner.
As the young soldier runs in, he is hugged by his father and brother, a full-time yeshiva student, and a message comes up on the screen stating that “more than 30,000 conscripts and career soldiers voted for Shas in the last election.”
“One son studies in a yeshiva, and his brother serves in the IDF, each contributing to the people of Israel in their own way,” the party says in a statement. “This is the story of the Shas family: faith, tradition, unity and love of Israel. Torah students and IDF soldiers, we are all one family.”
Shas is reportedly concerned that its more traditional, Zionist voters, upset over the party’s hardline stance against ultra-Orthodox military service, are defecting to National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud and even Gadi Eisenkot’s opposition Yashar factions.
Last Thursday, during a discussion aimed at patching up a public rift with chairman Aryeh Deri, Shas spiritual leader and former chief rabbi Yitzhak Yosef blessed the troops, calling them “messengers of the Holy One, Blessed be He” in a video released by a party spokesman.
Shas has pushed hard for legislation maintaining the decades-long broad exemption of ultra-Orthodox men from military service. Yosef himself has engaged in years of harsh anti-conscription rhetoric, including calling on yeshiva students to flush draft orders down the toilet and threatening a mass exodus of Haredi Jews from the country should the government arrest yeshiva students for evasion.
He has also blamed the deaths of IDF troops in Gaza on Haredi yeshiva students’ insufficient Torah study, called a fellow rabbi and bereaved father of a slain soldier a heretic for advocating Haredi conscription, and called June’s US-Iran deal a divine punishment for Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara’s efforts to crack down on draft dodgers.
אפשר להניח שבש"ס מרגישים בטוחים בקהל החרדי-ספרדי, לכן את הקמפיין מפנים ל-4 מנדטים המסורתיים של ש״ס. הסרטון פונה לקהל המסורתי עם המסרים המיתולוגיים של אמונה, מסורת, אחדות ואהבת ישראל. pic.twitter.com/Zncpq6AWxm
— שילה פריד???????? (@shilofreid) August 22, 2026
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