After dozens of young Chabad bochurim were arrested Tuesday morning at Ben Gurion Airport upon returning from a year of study at yeshiva in Brooklyn, detained on charges of desertion for learning Torah, Shas has launched an unusually sharp attack on Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara.
Shas accuses the Attorney General of "blatant and unprecedented political interference in the election campaign," alleging that she is doing so "by issuing orders for violent arrests of yeshiva students, despite the temporary law enacted to prevent political interference during the election period."
The statement added that "Shas strongly condemns this morning's arrest of Chabad yeshiva bochurim at Ben Gurion Airport."
Following the arrests, Shas faction chairman and Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee member MK Yinon Azoulay is working on the orders of Shas chairman Aryeh Deri with senior IDF officials, demanding the immediate release of the bochurim without any further delay.
In an interview Shas chairman Aryeh Deri gave to Yossi Ben Attar on Kan Moreshet last week, he sharply attacked the Attorney General over the arrest of yeshiva bochurim, saying "you see that it's all the Attorney General, the anarchist, who wants to bring down the right-wing government, and is trying to push this issue with all her might."
According to him, "she saw that for a month or two this wasn't the most talked-about topic, because according to all the polls and studies, the issue of Torah learners and the draft is number 5 or number 6, and there are even studies where it's number 8 in the order of priority of what the public's problems are. And she saw that it wasn't coming up, so she went and... as if coordinated in advance. She forced the military police to go to Shmah, and unfortunately there are elements in the military police, commanders, who also want to bring down the right-wing government, who also work from a left-wing agenda. And they went and arrested bochurim, knew that the next day there would be demonstrations by the Yerushalmi faction, they'd block roads, police would beat people, arrest people, and the whole country would talk against the chareidim. That's what she wanted and that's what she's doing."
When asked whether she's doing this on the orders or at the instigation of someone from the left, from leaders of left-wing parties, the Shas chairman replied: "She doesn't need to... she's part of them. Look at their concerts and operas, at all their corrupt culture, when she enters there she gets a standing ovation like the gadol hador. So what, you don't understand? A mediocre lawyer at best, whom Gideon Sa'ar appointed by mistake, he doesn't sleep at night over that mistake he made, who in the previous government, everything passed to her, no one even knew her name. She didn't tweet, she didn't open her mouth, let them appoint a Chief of Staff a week before the election, made an agreement with Lebanon on the maritime agreement with Hezbollah without bringing it to the Knesset, she gave them everything."
"Suddenly after the election, when she understood there was going to be judicial reform here and that there was the position of splitting the Attorney General, she understood the situation and she took it [on] as an agenda. And suddenly she became the greatest of jurists, suddenly became the most admired. She understands, she and her friends, that they were heroes of the world, and with this they're buying their status... that it's impossible for a government to fire her unanimously. The mouth that forbade is the mouth that permits, that's a great principle in law too. And still the High Court protects her, so we're done."
