Election Committee Orders Shas and Aryeh Deri to Remove Campaign Video Featuring Religious Soldier

The chairman of Israel's Central Elections Committee, Judge Noam Solberg, instructed the Shas party and its leader, MK Aryeh Deri, to remove a campaign video published on Saturday evening. The video showed a religious soldier walking home on Friday night, with his family waiting for him to make Kiddush, and ended with a message stating that 30,000 soldiers voted for Shas in the last elections, alongside the party's election symbol.

The decision followed a petition by the "Yashar LeIsrael with Eisenkot" party, which argued that the video violated prohibitions against using the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in election propaganda and against displaying party symbols before 42 days prior to election day. The petition also requested a temporary injunction to remove the video until the case was resolved.

Judge Solberg ruled that the petition had merit regarding both claims and granted the temporary injunction. He ordered Shas and Deri to delete the video from all social media accounts and respond to the petition within two days. The ruling cited election laws forbidding the use of the IDF in a way that could imply military endorsement of a party and prohibiting the use of party symbols outside the official campaign period.

Shas responded by accusing Judge Solberg of yielding to left-wing pressure and claimed the video contained no military symbols. The party criticized what it called ongoing legal persecution of right-wing, traditional, and religious groups and asserted that while the video could be removed, the support of hundreds of thousands of families for Shas could not be erased.