Gadi Eizenkot Challenges Shas Over Military Recruitment in Election Campaign Clash

Ahead of the upcoming elections, Gadi Eizenkot's party Yashar! has demanded that Shas remove a campaign video titled "A Father's Life" by 11:00 AM, accusing it of unauthorized use of soldiers and the party's letters. Shas responded sharply, accusing Eizenkot of focusing on training Mansour Abbas and the Muslim Brotherhood instead. Yashar! is leveraging this dispute to criticize Shas's longstanding policy on ultra-Orthodox military conscription, highlighting past statements by Shas leader Aryeh Deri expressing pride in family members who do not serve in the IDF. Yashar! condemned what it called promoting draft evasion while using IDF soldiers as election props.

Shas rejected accusations regarding the portrayal of the IDF in the video, clarifying that no official IDF symbols were used and that the video shows a family member returning home in civilian clothes to counter false propaganda, including claims by Eizenkot's party that Shas supports draft evasion. This confrontation follows earlier political clashes between Eizenkot and Deri, including Eizenkot's criticism of Shas's "budget for evasion" policy earlier this year, which Deri publicly regretted.

Eizenkot has carefully distinguished his criticism of Shas's leadership policies from its voter base, praising Shas as a party with broad Zionist components and noting his mother voted for it for 30 years. Meanwhile, Yashar! pointed out that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also uses images and videos featuring soldiers in his campaign, arguing that restrictions on using the IDF for political campaigns should apply equally to all parties.

This legal argument builds on a precedent set by the Likud party against Yashar!, which previously had to remove a video featuring AI-generated soldiers. Yashar! insists the same standards be applied to its rivals. The party also recently faced a cease-and-desist letter from Likud over a digitally altered billboard ad, which Yashar! rejected. Election propaganda laws are increasingly central to the campaign, with parties using legal warnings, removal demands, and petitions to the election committee as part of their strategic battles over campaign messaging and agenda control.