The ultra-Orthodox Shas party was ordered on Sunday to remove a campaign video published a day earlier that featured an IDF soldier, seemingly violating a ban on using images of security forces in election propaganda.
Following a complaint filed by Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party, Central Elections Committee chairman Justice Noam Sohlberg issued an interim order requiring Shas chairman Aryeh Deri to take down the video in question and gave Deri two days to respond to the petition.
The video — an apparent bid to hold onto moderate voters turned off by the party’s hardline stance against IDF conscription of ultra-Orthodox men — features a religious 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. A message comes up on the screen claiming 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 released with the video on Saturday night. “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.”
