Eli Yishai, Aryeh Deri
Eli Yishai, Aryeh DeriYonatan Sindel/Flash 90

Former MK Eli Yishai on Thursday rejected a reconciliation offer from Shas chairman Aryeh Deri, saying Deri’s offer was nothing but a political spin.

Yishai also explained that he was rejecting the offer because he and Deri’s worldviews are the complete opposite of one another.

According to a Channel 10 News report on Thursday evening, Deri offered a deal according to which Yishai would disband his new party, Yachad-Ha'am Itanu, and come back to Shas, and in return Deri would cover Yishai's debt of several million shekels from his election campaign and offer him an official post in Shas.

But Yishai rejected the deal in a statement later Thursday, saying, “I suppose you will not be surprised if I told you that this was a media spin meant to present [Deri] as a man of peace which is far from reality as I will detail later on. But before anything else, it is important for me to mention: I have explained clearly countless times that our opinions are different. Deri has leftist opinions, while I am planted deep in the right.”

“He believes in autocracy and turning the MKs into puppets, and I believe in giving MKs freedom of action and expression,” Yishai continued. “I believe that many of the successes in my time as Shas chairman were due to this approach, and its zero achievements in the current term are due to the paralysis of the MKs through the ruling dictatorship. I am a man of integrity and ethics, Deri has his own style.

“Banning Shas members from being interviewed on the Kol Barama radio station because I'm friends with the owner, is only a modest fraction of the ‘peace campaign’ Deri has been running since the elections,” Yishai continued. “Hiring men who threaten business owners and organizations not to dare advertise on the station, firing the spokesman of MK Margi because he is close to my family, dismissing the old faction secretary, forbidding Shas MKs to come and comfort me during the shiva for my late sister, and the list goes on.

“So do not buy that media show. My mentor, Rabbi Meir Mazuz, held out both his hands for peace and was rejected,” said Yishai.

“Yachad is a path. Of truth, integrity, honesty, it is not bought with money even though it needs it. We will continue to believe in our values ​​and fight for them and not fall into honey traps and spins. If his words were honest, then everyone will run in the next election according to their way, according to their opinion and without disrupting the other,” he concluded.

Shas received seven seats in the last elections, a great setback from the 11 seats it previously had. Yachad ran jointly with Otzma Yehudit, and fell just short of the recently raised 3.25% threshold percentage. 

Shas activists were revealed to have conducted a massive voter fraud campaign against Yachad, subtly invalidating voting slips to steal the democratic rights of the party's voters nationwide.