A political storm erupted Thursday after Shas chairman Aryeh Deri sharply criticized IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir in an exclusive interview with Kikar HaShabbat, accusing the military chief of trying to help the political left. The remarks drew a wave of furious responses from opposition party leaders. The full interview is set to air Thursday evening.
Deri, who authored the arrest law that passed in the Knesset and bars military police from detaining yeshiva students who have become draft evaders, said he had grown troubled by the chief of staff's conduct. "He's my friend, I appreciate him, I've defended him a great deal in discussions where he's attacked," Deri said, according to the interview. "But unfortunately, for a long time now, I've seen that he's lost it." Deri accused Zamir of overstepping his role by weighing in politically and said the chief of staff "tried to help the left-wing bloc."
The comments came after Zamir sent a sharply worded letter to the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee warning against the arrest law, which was ultimately approved in its second and third readings despite his objection. Zamir had argued the legislation would not add manpower to the army and would instead incentivize draft evasion by shielding evaders from prosecution.
Yisrael Ish! party chairman Gadi Eisenkot responded with unusually forceful language, calling Deri's remarks "a display of chutzpah and disconnection." Eisenkot wrote, "There is nothing Jewish about sending only some of the sons of Israel to a milchemet mitzvah. There is nothing of leadership in turning the chief of staff into a tool in your dirty political game." He added that if the Haredi leadership had even a shred of awareness, whoever pushed through the draft-evasion legislation this week, while the best of Israel's sons and daughters are deployed across multiple fronts, "would have at least kept his 'criticism' of the chief of staff to himself." Eisenkot closed by addressing Deri directly: "Aryeh, after three years of war, maybe it's time to internalize that the draft is not a political matter. It is the Jewish people's insurance policy in the State of Israel, a matter of national security."
Former prime minister and Bayachad party chairman Naftali Bennett joined the criticism, writing that Deri's attacks on the chief of staff "strengthen Israel's enemies and tear apart the IDF." Bennett added, "One moment Deri boasts about his draft-evading grandsons, and the next he attacks the chief of staff, as if he bears no responsibility for the chaos and terrible rift in society. Only in the government of October 7 does someone like Deri, whose life's work has been encouraging mass draft evasion, dare to blame the chief of staff for his own failure." Bennett closed with a message to soldiers: "Hold strong, reinforcements are on the way. Soon this will be over, soon the Netanyahu-Deri-Smotrich coalition will stop abusing you. Soon we'll replace them, and together we'll fix Israel."
Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman added, "There is no limit to Aryeh Deri's chutzpah." Liberman said that anyone who sits in the security cabinet while simultaneously fighting to keep an entire sector out of military service, while other people's children serve, fight, and fall for the state, "is the last person who can attack a chief of staff who has devoted decades of his life to Israel's security." Liberman said that in the next government, "the parties of draft evaders will sit in the opposition."
Opposition leader MK Yair Lapid posted an angry response as well, writing that it was not the chief of staff who mixed politics with the military, but Deri and what Lapid called his "shameful gang of draft dodgers, deserters and refuseniks" who involved themselves with the army in the middle of a war. Lapid wrote that Deri "visited deserters in prison in the morning, hugged his draft-evading grandchildren at noon, and sent other people's children to die in war at night from the cabinet," adding that the chief of staff "only told the truth: because of Deri and his people, we don't have enough soldiers."
As of Thursday, Defense Minister Israel Katz had not responded to the coalition attacks on Zamir.
