The Israeli left is shooting itself in the foot, Shas head Aryeh Deri has said, according to the hareidi news outlet Kikar Hashabat.
Aryeh Deri, the Minister of Economy, spoke after left-wing actor Oded Kotler called Likud voters “a herd of cud-munching cattle.” Kotler joins prominent leftists such as Yair Garboz, who called right-wing voters “foolish mezuzah kissers,” and Alona Kimhi, who suggested that right-wingers are “Neanderthals” who should “drink cyanide.”
Deri joked about Kotler’s insults, saying, “At best, we’re invisible, at worst, we’re a herd of cattle.” During the last elections, Shas campaigned on behalf of “invisible” disadvantaged sectors in Israel.
Growing more serious, Deri said, “Some people on the Left have the idea that whoever thinks differently than they do is primitive.”
That attitude will lose them the next elections, too, he warned. “It’s a shame that some don’t understand that this idea, this snobbish condescension, is part of why they’ve been in the opposition for so many years,” he said.
Still, that hasn’t stopped Deri from calling on the Zionist Union to join the coalition.