Shas launches election campaign with video aimed at courting soldiers, Zionist right

In an apparent bid to hold onto moderate voters turned off by its hardline stance against IDF conscription, the ultra-Orthodox Shas party on Saturday night launched its election campaign with a 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 runs 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 said in a statement.

“This is the story of the Shas family: faith, tradition, unity and love of Israel,” the party said. “Torah students and IDF soldiers, we are all one family.”

The message stands in stark contrast to its actions in recent years, where it has been at the forefront of efforts to enshrine legislation that would grant an almost complete exemption from military service to ultra-Orthodox men.

Shas, which traditionally represents ultra-Orthodox Jews of Middle Eastern and North African extraction, is reportedly concerned that its more traditional, Zionist voters, upset over the party’s hardline stance on the draft issue, 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 parties.

New Shas campaign ad seems intent on fixing its hardline anti-conscription efforts' effect on its more traditional, Zionist voters pic.twitter.com/MKXPLBNy3j

— Sam Sokol (@SamuelSokol) August 22, 2026

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.

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.

Shas, which won 11 seats in the last election, has been polling at around just seven seats in several recent pre-election surveys.

Much of this slide has been attributed to the ongoing political crisis over drafting ultra-Orthodox men, with Shas paying maybe the heaviest political price of any party for its hardline stance against military service.

The Ashkenazi United Torah Judaism, which led the campaign alongside Shas, has not seen a similar dip.

With Shas slipping in the polls, it has apparently decided to attempt to soften its image nationally and appear more Zionist and more in favor of the draft and the army as a whole, though it has not announced any changes to its party platform, which has for several years been geared on enshrining draft exemption and maintaining Haredi cultural and political independence from the rest of the country.

The outgoing government failed to pass the law enshrining mass Haredi exemptions. Two hurriedly passed laws that enshrined Torah study as a Basic Law and temporarily froze the arrest of draft dodgers have since been halted by the High Court.

Some 72,000 ultra-Orthodox men aged 18 to 24 are currently believed to be eligible for military service, but have not enlisted. The IDF has said repeatedly in recent months that it urgently needs 12,000 new recruits amid the ongoing multifront conflict. The outgoing coalition’s efforts to enshrine ultra-Orthodox exemption from the draft in law have drawn fierce opposition from reservists, Knesset legal advisers and much of the public.