Shas chairman Aryeh Deri lashed out at IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir on Thursday over his strong opposition to the coalition’s recently passed law freezing the arrest of ultra-Orthodox draft dodgers, accusing the military chief of trying “to help the left-wing bloc during an election campaign.”

The chair of the ultra-Orthodox party also criticized the High Court of Justice for freezing the new legislation the day after it passed, declaring that the country’s top court “no longer has authority over us.”

Before the law was passed on Tuesday, Zamir warned in a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Israel Katz, and Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chair Boaz Bismuth that the legislation was “clearly and unequivocally inconsistent with the IDF’s needs” and amounted to providing “mass exemptions from prosecution” for draft dodgers.

Some 72,000 ultra-Orthodox men aged 18 to 24 are currently believed to be eligible for military service, but have not enlisted, despite mounting calls for their conscription as Israel has fought wars on multiple fronts since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack, while facing a growing manpower shortage.

Speaking to the ultra-Orthodox Kikar HaShabbat news channel, Deri, who sits in the government’s key decision-making security cabinet, claimed on Thursday that Zamir had “lost it,” and was “preoccupied with attacks against him and with protecting his own reputation.”

The Shas chair argued that Zamir knows that arresting draft dodgers “won’t bring a single new recruit.”

“What the chief of staff did was try to help the left-wing bloc during an election campaign,” he claimed. “He is the army’s chief of staff. He must not engage in politics.”

Deri further insisted that Zamir had “set a very dangerous precedent” by coming out publicly against the legislation and had “caused great damage to the........

© The Times of Israel