Yoav Ben-Tzur of Shas: "For us to join the next government, we will demand a conscription law even before the swearing-in"

"120 and One" is the political podcast of ynet hosted by Moran Azulay, who hosts decision-makers, legislators, and reality-shapers in the State of Israel every week.

Election polls these days are not flattering to Shas. The storm surrounding the issues of conscription and draft evasion, alongside the abandonment of young people to other right-wing platforms, is causing the party to fear a multi-year low in the number of mandates. But MK Yoav Ben-Tzur, who served as Minister of Labor in the outgoing government, is convinced that it is possible to bring back secular and traditional voters who may have left following the debate over military service. In an interview with "120 and One," he claims that Shas will stick to the right-wing bloc in the next term as well, and explains why supporting Gadi Eisenkot for Prime Minister is not an option.

MK Ben-Tzur insists that Shas has not acted as a sectoral party in recent years: "When I was a candidate for the Knesset, Rabbi Ovadia called me and said, 'You were elected by the Shas movement, but the day after you were elected - you are a Knesset member for the entire State of Israel. Anyone who turns to you for help - Arab, Jew, secular, Haredi, religious, left-wing, right-wing - you must help them.' This is the motto of our movement."

And yet, it felt like something happened in the last year or two. Shas is changing, perhaps radicalizing a bit. In the eyes of many, you have become very sectoral.

"You are hinting at the conscription issue. Let's look for a moment at how it started. After the Holocaust, in which hundreds and thousands of yeshivas were destroyed in Europe, the Haredim came to Ben-Gurion and told him that we are here thanks to the Bible, and the Almighty bequeathed this country to the people of Israel. We cannot establish such a state and not preserve the world of Torah and yeshivas. They asked him to let them establish yeshivas, and that young men could defer their military service as long as they study Torah. The moment they stop studying Torah and want to go out, for example, to the labor market, they will have to do their part in military service in one way or another. Ben-Gurion agreed."

The problem today is with the number of Torah students, and with the message that is not heard clearly: whoever does not study - should be conscripted.

"They always tried to bring regulated and agreed-upon legislation, and always in the end the Supreme Court came and canceled this legislation. We are simply asking to preserve what was. Like with King David: for every soldier, there was someone studying Torah and praying."

And what about those who do not study Torah?

"We are worried. We want a young man who enters the army Haredi to eventually come out Haredi. If they throw him into a system where he does not have the logical conditions to maintain his Judaism and religiosity, we will not agree. We will not send young men, even those who do not study, so that they come out of the army not Haredi. The IDF did not really think it would get thousands of Haredi fighters now. It is also not prepared for it. Someone once said, you know what? No problem. Want 60,000 yeshiva students? See what a commotion there will be. They will need Mehadrin kosher food, they will need to be without female company, they will need to be in separate camps, they will need to be given Shabbat, study hours. Do you understand what kind of event this could be? It would cause chaos in the army."

You were a captain in the Nahal Brigade. From your experience, is there really a fear of not coming out Haredi?

"There is a big difference. When I went to the army, I was already married with a child. But there were challenges. There were Sabbaths without a minyan, sometimes it was very hard to keep the Sabbath. You have to be very strong to stand up to these things. But there are 1,001 solutions if you want. After all, not everyone is a fighter, even in the general public. There are a lot of things that can be done - in the fire department, in the police, in MADA. You can give meaningful service also in national service."

So if I summarize, whoever studies Torah - will continue. What happens with a young Haredi who does not study Torah?

"First of all, whoever does not have a draft deferral must be conscripted. There is nothing to do. We expect everyone to study in yeshivas, and whoever does not study will find their way in conscription or national service."

"The arrests do not help." Ben-Tzur is a pleasant man who speaks politely and quietly, but when he is asked to address the burden on the shoulders of reserve fighters and their families, his words may grate on most of the serving public.

"I am asking you now," he begins, "when we fought with Iran, did we need reserve soldiers? A little bit, in the Air Force. Today's wars are not measured by the number of soldiers. They are measured more by electronics, by remote control."

There are so many soldiers in Gaza and Lebanon who will tell you otherwise.

"I know, and I want to say that many reserve soldiers volunteered. In a sense, sorry to say to you, it was very profitable for them to serve, and I do not want to elaborate on this matter."

And there are a lot of people for whom it is not profitable and they have no choice.

"Again, no one will solve the problem in five minutes by saying 'forward march' to all the yeshiva students. It will not happen. I also did not see that the arrests of the young men caused any of them to go to the army."

This week, probably due to a leakage of votes from Shas against the background of its position on the conscription issue, it published a video as part of the election campaign, in which a family is seen around the Shabbat table, when one son is Haredi and the other is a fighter in the army. When Ben-Tzur was asked if Shas didn't remember this too late, he laughs and says: "There were no elections." However, he adds: "This is the real Shas, which touches the hearts of the traditional. Entire families combine one and the other."

So where was this the whole term?

"Who said it wasn't there? But when there is a problem and everyone is launching a smear campaign against you, you have to radicalize to the other side. Also, Maimonides says that a person who wants to do something - should go to the maximum, not the minimum. To reach the middle, we had to radicalize. And we radicalized. Because we have to protect the young men who study and the mothers who are afraid they will be taken to prisons."

There are mothers who are afraid the child will not return from the army.

"True, and we are with those mothers. I know it up close. Ten of my nephews served in Lebanon and Gaza, some of them officers. We think that even the yeshiva students who study Torah help protect the soldiers."

Do you understand the anger that developed towards the Haredi public in this term?

"I understand that they launched a campaign to cause this government to fall."

It's not a campaign. There was the October 7 massacre, there are reserve soldiers who are collapsing under the burden, there are families that are falling apart, there are businesses that are crumbling. Now help is needed, and there was a feeling that the Haredi public was not providing it.

"I, as Minister of Labor, provided help to all the reservists and their wives."

But not with a call to "go get conscripted."

"You talked about the reserve soldiers who are collapsing. I promoted the regulations according to which instead of 30 days after reserve duty during which it is impossible to fire the servant - now it is 60 days. And we applied it also to the wives of the reservists."

During the term, you refused to sign off on subsidizing daycare for everyone, as long as the Attorney General limits daycare subsidies for the Haredim. You said that if the Haredim don't get it, then no one will get it. You caused a very big anger with this move.

"It cannot be that in the State of Israel they discriminate between blood and blood. What is the little child to blame that his father was not in the army? What is the baby to blame?"

Ashkenazification? Us? And yet, looking back at the last four years, MK Ben-Tzur points to one significant mistake for which the Haredi parties are responsible.

"The mistake was that we did not sign a coalition agreement that says that first of all we pass the conscription law," he says. "If we had done it before the reform, everything would have been organized and there would have been no problem for anyone."

So would Haredi soldiers have come to the army? Would that have solved the problem?

"Even today, a few thousand Haredim are conscripted. The distress was created by will. I say again: by will. I heard Yair Golan say that actually this was a way to try to dissolve this government. We regret that we did not receive the law during the period of Lieberman and Gantz. We could have passed it then and finished with it. Then it seemed not good to us. Part of the Ashkenazi public thought it was not good, but maybe we would have already finished it. Today we can only dream of such a law. I say again: if we have to enter the coalition, a conscription law will pass before the government is established."

So whoever wants to continue with Shas in the next government will know from now on: first a conscription law.

"Unequivocally. It is agreed by everyone and so it will be."

Is there an option that you will be part of a government that Netanyahu does not head?

"We go with the faith-based bloc. Our public is a right-wing public. We are believing people and I don't think we can sit with the other side."

But you were angry at Netanyahu. The public credit was wasted on judicial reform instead of a conscription law that was promised to you at the core of the agreements. And yet you say that in the test of the result it is better than another option?

"Even between brothers there are fights but they remain brothers. We feel part of the base."

What is your relationship with Gadi Eisenkot? His friends in the camp attack him for being too soft in the outlines he presents towards the Haredi public.

"During the war, he was against everything. Against attacking, against eliminating. That is, by and large, the person is a left-wing man. Our option is the bloc. What will happen if other parties want to join? We will talk about it. But first we have an election campaign. We are focused on trying to get the number of mandates we need to get so that we have a say."

There are those who say that the Shas of the last decade has become a bit Ashkenazified, has become similar to United Torah Judaism. UTJ dragged Shas more than the other way around.

"Shas has uniqueness. If we were like UTJ, then we would have received maybe 5-6 mandates, that's the base. This will be a test in the elections, definitely."

Is Shas a Zionist party?

"What is Zionist? Zion, Jerusalem, we are lovers of the Land of Israel, lovers of the State of Israel, we know how to appreciate what the state does for the entire Israeli public. What is Zionist? Are we against Zionism? The opposite is true. There are many people within the left who are against Zionism. We are not against Zionism, we are for Zionism, we are for Zion and Jerusalem."

So you say that you are a Zionist party.

"We are a Zionist party, certainly. What do you call Zionism? That is the question. Everyone can define Zionism in a different way. The question is what you call Zionism."

Will Goldknopf and the other partners also say this?

"I do not represent Goldknopf. They are a sister party, like another party. We are also Haredi, but we also speak to the traditional, to the Sephardim in the periphery."

If you have to summarize, did you have a good term?

"In terms of action, we had an excellent term. Minister of Welfare Yaakov Margi did an excellent job. Also the Ministry of Health of Uriel Buso and before that Moshe Arbel, who was also in the Ministry of Interior, and also in the Ministry of Religious Services we made a revolution, and also I, the small one, in the Ministry of Labor. For five years they did not raise the minimum wage, and I raised it three times in three years, despite the pressure of conglomerates and stakeholders, for whom any increase in the minimum wage is a much larger expense."

In the cost of living you failed. It is very expensive here.

"Right, but still people are buying, and a lot. I go to cheap supermarkets, Osher Ad or Rami Levy. There are many things that I do not allow myself. I take cheap substitutes. I think that's how one should conduct oneself."

And yet, as a government, maybe you should have given more emphasis to the cost of living.

"Maybe, but still you see that the State of Israel is economically stable despite the war and the large expenses."