For nine minutes, Zeev Elkin talked to Aryeh Deri, not knowing that it was not the chairman of Shas he was addressing but Elad Cohen, an impersonator from Kol Chai radio.
Elkin, a candidate for the New Hope party, spoke with the impersonator and told him, among other things, that Avigdor Liberman would support Yair Lapid for prime minister.
Elkin told Deri that the New Hope Party did not include Liberman's image in its ads, in order to preserve the possibility of a coalition with the haredi parties. Elkin also said that the party lost seats to Lapid because of the anti-haredi message that Lapid is promoting.
"We say clear things," Elkin said in the recording, "we cannot say 'just the right bloc' because once we do not go with Bibi we do not have 61 seats , if we say 'only the right bloc' they will laugh at us. There is no 61 for the right without Bibi. That is the truth."
"I will tell you what the difference is between you (Deri) and us: you have your own arena, you don't have to be in the studios. With us the arena is the studios. We are a new party; all our ability to communicate with the public is mainly through the studios," Elkin told the impersonator.