Elections Committee Orders Ultra-Orthodox Shas Party to Remove Campaign Video Featuring Soldier
Israel's Elections Committee has ordered the Shas party and MK Aryeh Deri to remove an election video featuring a religious soldier, citing a ban on IDF use in.
Jerusalem, 23 August, 2026 (TPS-IL) — Central Elections Committee Chairman Judge Noam Sohlberg ordered the Ultra-Orthodox (Sephardic) Shas party and party chairman MK Aryeh Deri on Sunday to remove an election campaign video published the previous evening.
The video depicts a man who appears to be a religious soldier walking home on the eve of Shabbat, with his family awaiting him for Kiddush. The video ends with a caption stating that 30,000 soldiers voted for Shas in the last election, followed by an image of an election ballot bearing the letters representing Shas.
Another party claimed, among other things, that this was a violation of the ban on using the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) in election advertising. The party also requested a temporary order to remove the video until the end of the hearing on the petition.
the Chairman of the Central Elections Committee determined that the prospects of the petition regarding the two aforementioned bans justify granting the requested temporary injunction. He ordered Shas and MK Deri to remove the video from all their social media accounts, and to respond to the petition within two days.