A minister from the ultranationalist Otzma Yehudit suggested on Sunday that his party may try to attract voters from the Haredi Shas party in the upcoming election.

“The Sephardic Haredi public is Zionist. It was Zionist before Shas arrived and pulled it more toward the Lithuanian side of the map,” Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu told the Kan public broadcaster, referring to the non-Hasidic stream of Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodoxy.

“We made a mistake, we gave up on them and fought them, even my [religious Zionist] community — we didn’t get close enough to them, until the Otzma Yehudit party was established,” he said.

Eliyahu was asked about comments made the night before by Shas spiritual leader and former Sephardic chief rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, who said he had lost hope in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ever “repenting” — apparently for his perceived refusal to heed core ultra-Orthodox demands related to drafting Haredi men and sanctioning evaders — but expressed hope that Netanyahu’s main rival in the upcoming election, Yashar party chair Gadi Eisenkot, could still do so.

“Due to our many sins, we are in a secular, non-ultra-Orthodox country,” Yosef lamented in his weekly religious sermon. “We pray that everyone repents. There are those who will repent, there are those who won’t.”

“Will Bibi Netanyahu repent? Not a chance. Eisenkot, perhaps........

© The Times of Israel