Arye Deri sits in cabinet while claiming yeshiva students sacrifice more than soldiers
Arye Deri's return to politics, despite multiple convictions, highlights the deep divisions within Israel and threatens the unity needed during wartime.
Arye Deri has long been a politician whose legacy brings mostly embarrassment and shame to the State of Israel.
In 2000, he was convicted of bribery during his tenure as interior minister and sentenced to three years in prison. For most people that would mean the end, but for Deri that wasn’t even close to being the case.
In 2011, he returned to politics and, by 2016, was reappointed to the very same Interior Ministry where he had committed his original crimes.
Predictably, history repeated itself. Deri once again came under investigation, and in 2022, he accepted a plea deal for tax offenses, resigned from the Knesset, and was convicted a second time.
To secure a lenient sentence, Deri was supposed to quit politics for good. But like many repeat offenders, he broke that promise too. Within a year, he was back. When the current coalition was formed in 2023, Deri reemerged not only as a party leader but as one of Netanyahu’s most indispensable political partners.
It was a clear and painful reminder of just how broken Israeli politics has become.
And yet, as bad as all that is, what Deri said last week – captured on video and released on Tuesday – takes the disgrace to an entirely new level.
Speaking to a group of yeshiva students during a private event, Deri addressed the ongoing war and called for haredi (ultra-Orthodox) participation in the IDF. He said: “Because of the war, you should contribute to the IDF in service? God forbid.”
He continued: “God forbid it should occur to anyone here in a moment of weakness that maybe at a time like this [a war] we need to do something different, maybe we need to contribute. God forbid.”
He wasn’t misquoted. He wasn’t taken out of context. He said what he meant, and he meant what he said.
And if that wasn’t enough, Deri went on to explain who he believes are the true defenders of the State of Israel: “Gentlemen, the people carrying the burden [of the defense of Israel] are the Torah students.”
Ordinarily, we could brush this off as the latest ignorant statement from yet another ultra-Orthodox politician who has been receiving handouts from the state for decades, shielded from the responsibilities the rest of the country carries.
But Deri is not just any politician. He is the leader of Shas, one of Netanyahu’s most important coalition partners, and since the beginning of this war, he has been sitting as a member of Israel’s security cabinet.
Yes, Deri has decades of experience in government. He was part of Yitzhak Rabin’s coalition in the 1990s, and some claim that he plays a moderating role within today’s far-right cabinet. But those credentials make his words even more harmful.
This is a man who sits in the room where life-and-death decisions are made – about ground invasions, hostage negotiations, airstrikes, and ceasefires. And he has the gall to say that Torah students who dodge the draft are the ones carrying the national burden?
What authority does Deri have on soldier trauma?
How can someone who knows the trauma our soldiers are experiencing – how many are battling PTSD, how many are being redeployed again and again, and how some are taking their own lives under the weight of it all – sit there and say that those who are actually fighting and dying are not the real contributors?How can a politician who helps decide whether to expand the ground offensive in Gaza or launch a strike on Iran’s nuclear program say with a straight face that yeshiva students, not IDF soldiers, are the ones defending the country?
How can someone who sees how overextended the IDF is, how reliant we are on reservists, and how the burden is being carried by fewer and fewer families dare to utter the words “God forbid” about the idea of haredi service?
It is chutzpah of the highest order. And yet, as angry as we may be at Deri, the truth is that the fault lies not only with him. It lies with us.
We, the people who serve, who work, who pay taxes, and who raise our children with love of the country and an understanding that we all need to serve, are to blame because we have allowed this situation to persist.
WHEN THE Knesset voted last week to remove Yuli Edelstein as chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee – because he dared to advance a bill that would require a modest increase in haredi enlistment – there should have been outrage.
The law wasn’t perfect, but it was an attempt to fix something deeply broken. And yet, barely anyone made a sound. The country shrugged and moved on.
Why? Because we’re exhausted and overwhelmed, and because every day brings new headlines – about starving hostages like Evyatar David and Rom Braslavski, about the need to potentially attack Iran again in the near future, and because we’re still fighting a war that has dragged on longer than anyone imagined, with no political horizon and no clear plan for how it ends.
And so, we let it slide. We let Deri sit in the security cabinet. We let him speak on behalf of the Israeli people. We let him mock the IDF, insult our soldiers, and elevate draft dodgers to the status of national heroes, all this while he sits in the security cabinet.
We tell ourselves: “He’s not my leader.” But that’s not true; he is our leader. He’s one of the people in the room deciding the future of this country. He was there when the government approved expanding operations in Gaza.
He was there when the war cabinet debated whether to accept a hostage deal or not. He was there when Israel struck Iran. And he’s there now, making decisions that will determine who lives and who dies.
And he does all this while being completely detached from the consequences.
How do we know? Because this year, the Knesset released a list of the lawmakers who spend the least time doing their jobs, attending hearings, submitting legislation, and just showing up.
Do you know who came in dead last? Arye Deri. He barely attends even 20% of Knesset hearings and spends, according to reports, just 14 hours a month in the parliament building.
That’s how seriously he takes the job we pay him to do. That’s how accountable he feels. That’s how much respect he has for the taxpayers who fund his salary and the soldiers who risk their lives while he lectures yeshiva students to “God forbid” serve in the IDF.
Shame on him, but also shame on us.
Shame on us for letting this continue – for tolerating a government that allows convicted criminals to return to power and for failing to insist on the most basic level of shared responsibility, especially in wartime.
This war has clarified many things. It has shown us who is willing to fight for this country and who is willing to exploit it. The IDF cannot continue to be an army of only half the nation.
The burden cannot be carried by the same families, generation after generation, while others are told that studying Torah is their “service” and that actual military enlistment is something to be avoided, “God forbid.”
This is a moment of reckoning. Either we maintain a national ethos based on shared sacrifice, or we collapse into a state of division and resentment. It is up to us.