Shas chairman Arye Deri has decided to launch a lengthy process of rebuilding the Sephardi haredi (ultra-Orthodox) party, beginning with a thorough internal examination of the reasons behind its electoral failure, after the recent elections saw the party lose roughly half its political strength, Walla learned on Friday.
Last week, Deri convened party representatives, including officials from the municipal level, and assigned them a task: Within approximately one week, each representative must submit detailed data on the election results in their area of responsibility, along with an analysis of the reasons for the party's decline and recommendations for the future.
Deri stressed to those attending that he was not interested in reports that sugarcoat reality or attempts to downplay the scale of the defeat. On the contrary, he asked for the harshest, most pointed, and most painful conclusions, recognizing that only by genuinely confronting the reasons for the loss could the party begin to recover.
In effect, Deri is establishing a kind of internal "commission of inquiry" to understand how one of the most effective electoral machines in Israeli politics ended up with such a poor result.
Shas organizational network harnessed to analyze election defeat
For years, Shas's grassroots organization was considered one of its greatest strengths. The party maintains an extensive network of activists and representatives in nearly every city and political stronghold associated with it, partly through a system known as "commanders of tens and commanders of thousands."
This organizational network, which has long been used to mobilize voters and boost turnout on Election Day, is now being enlisted to analyze the party's defeat and draw lessons from it.
In the coming days, party representatives are expected to begin presenting Deri with their data and conclusions. However, some within Shas believe the answers are already fairly clear.
"We became a branch of Peleg Yerushalmi (Jerusalem Faction)," a party source told Walla. "Rabbis were dragged along by Ashkenazi [spiritual leaders], there was hysteria surrounding the military draft issue, the rhetoric became increasingly extreme, and we were drawn further and further toward the extremist ultra-Orthodox camp. The ultra-Orthodox Shas took over the movement, while traditional Shas simply disappeared."
Shas too late to appeal to traditional Jewish voters
According to the source, Shas's attempt to appeal to traditional Jewish voters in the final stages of the election campaign came too late.
"You can't put two videos featuring soldiers into a campaign and think that will undo four years of damage. Traditional voters saw where we were heading, heard the statements, and felt that the movement no longer represented them."
Within the party, there is a growing understanding that the defeat was not merely the result of a failed election campaign, but reflects a deeper crisis concerning Shas's identity and its voter base.
The central question now facing Deri is whether the party can win back traditional Jewish voters who have drifted away without losing its ultra-Orthodox base.
"This isn't something you can fix in a single day," the source concluded. "The damage has been building for years. Now we need to begin a long process of rebuilding."