Bayit HaYehudi officials ran a fair campaign, visibly making an effort to go with the positive and not base a campaign on bashing others. The dati leumi party called on others to do the same but their call was not heeded by most parties unfortunately.

Now with elections in the past, Bayit Yehudi officials appear unwilling to take the blows any longer and officials lashed out at Shas, with the latter attacking party leader Naftali Bennett for aligning with Yair Lapid and his Yesh Atid party. The verbal assault followed the harsh criticism from Shas over reports that Bennett and Lapid decided they will enter the coalition together or both remain in opposition, realizing with their combined 31 seats they are in a position to bargain with Likud/Beitenu.

A senior party official stated “Shas believes we have a short memory, so short that when they begin shouting ‘they are creating a split in the nation’ people will forget what has been going on for years.

The official recalls how during the campaign Bayit Yehudi was referred to as “goyim” by Shas, and now “suddenly they remember we are Jews”.

Speaking with Arutz-7, the party official who is not named mentioned Yoni Shetbon, the soldier who evacuated Major Roi Klein HY”D who was killed after jumping on a hand grenade while shouting Shema Yisrael, or perhaps when Shas says “goyim” it refers to MK-elect Shuli Mualem, whose husband perished in the IAF helicopter tragedy that left over 70 dead.

The dati leumi party blames Shas for being responsible for creating the split in the nation, reminding the Sephardi party how it was simply non-responsive when it came to anti-Oslo protests and how it ignored the cries because it did not affect its tzibur.

The official decried Shas’ attacks against its rabbonim and tzibur, and the latest statement in which Eli Yishai on Monday 24 Shevat 5773 instructed Bayit Yehudi not to concern itself with religious issues, which Shas will tend to on its own. The official stated that Shas may have a monopoly, one that makes the secular tzibur sick of Torah because if its behavior.

“From the matter of enlistment to the military to daylight savings time – wherever they could have displayed a positive face of Judaism, they missed the boat. In the matter of appointing Zionist rabbis, too, they treated us like lepers. An entire generation of Zionist rabbis has been cut down under the chareidi steamroller” Arutz-7 quotes the official as saying.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)