Shas Accuses Edelstein of Coup Attempt

Tensions surrounding the proposed draft law for Charedim escalated Tuesday, as MK Yuli Edelstein, chairman of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, denounced the current legislative efforts. Edelstein warned that a conscription bill lacking real penalties would be “not a conscription law, but a bluff law.”

In response, the Shas party launched a fierce accusation against Edelstein, claiming he orchestrated a covert effort to unseat Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s October 7 massacre.

Quoting anonymous senior Shas figures, several Hebrew media outlets reported that “in the days after October 7, while Israel was fighting for its life, Edelstein was engaged in a coup attempt designed to make him prime minister.”

The sources alleged that “high-ranking people came to [Shas chairman Aryeh] Deri’s house again and again, saying that Edelstein and [Opposition Leader Yair] Lapid were coordinating on a no-confidence motion in which the opposition would install Edelstein in place of Netanyahu.”

“They offered extremely tempting offers so that Shas would join the move and give him the necessary votes,” the officials added. “These demands were rejected out of hand… just as he acted then only in his own best interests and not in the best interests of the state and the army, he is [also] doing so now.”

Yesh Atid, Lapid’s party, dismissed the allegations as entirely fabricated. “It is very impressive to us that for a year and eight months Deri kept such dramatic proposals secret and only now suddenly he remembered them in a miraculous way,” party officials said.
“Of course, they never existed.”