Both United Torah Judaism chairman MK Moshe Gafni and UTJ MK and Construction and Housing Minister Ya'acov Litzman all spoke out against Bennett’s decision to form a government with Yesh Atid and other parties.
Speaking at a dinner on Sunday night, Deri struck out at the coalition deal being worked out between Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid and Bennett, which will see the two share the job of prime minister in a rotation deal in which Bennett will serve first.
“There has never been impudence like this, little children with five and six seats who want to be prime minister,” attacked Deri.
“May God have mercy for such impudence,” he added.
On Monday, Deri’s spokesman issued a statement saying that the Shas Party was “convinced” that a right-wing, religious government of 65 MKs could formed “immediately,” in reference to a coalition of the Likud, Shas, UTJ, the Religious Zionist Party, Yamina and MK Gidon’s Sa'ar’s New Hope Party.
Sa'ar has insisted his party is intent on removing Benjamin Netanyahu from power and refused only on Sunday an offer by Netanyahu to serve in a prime ministerial rotation agreement with him and Bennett.
“We call on Naftali Bennett, [Yamina MK] Ayelet Shaked, Gidon Sa'ar [New Hope MK] Ze'ev Elkin in our last call, don’t lend your hand to a left-wing government that will endanger the Land of Israel and the Torah of Israel,” read the missive from Shas.
Gafni, speaking in the Knesset Finance Committee which he chairs, attacked Bennett implicitly by accusing him of abandoning the cause of retaining all of “the Land of Israel” by joining with left-wing parties in the putative unity government being formed.
Gafni said sardonically that he had always been told he was left-wing, and that “I am not with the Land of Israel,” in reference to his personal political leanings.
“But it turns out they lied to me, they said to me that the Land of Israel is most important, but it turns out that hating Bibi [Netanyahu] is more important than the Land of Israel,” said Gafni.
And Litzman issued a a video calling on Bennett, Shaked, Sa'ar and Elkin to reverse their decision to establish a government with Lapid and said they should put aside what he described as “personal concerns” for the sake of the country and the Jewish people.
“To let Lapid be prime minister while endangering the religious values and traditions of Israel is a lack of national responsibility,” said Litzman.
He also denounced a reported clause in the coalition deals being worked out which would see Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman become Finance Minister and a Yisrael Beytenu MK become chair of the Knesset Finance Committee.
Liberman has promised to cut welfare benefits to the ultra-Orthodox community, as well as cut funds to schools not teaching core curriculum studies which the majority of ultra-Orthodox schools do not teach, and cut funds for yeshiva stipends.
“Naftali, Ayelet, to give Liberman the great disseminator of hate against religion and the right-wing, the treasury and the finance committee is a disgrace, and an existential threat to the Torah world,” said Litzman.
On Sunday, when it became clear that Bennett was to announce his intention to form a unity government, Chief Rabbi of Safed and hard-right leader Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu denounced Bennett and Shaked and said that they would never again be able to form a party together with religious-Zionist parties or get the votes of religious-Zionist voters.
Eliyahu noted that in the first of the last four elections when Bennett and Shaked broke away from the Bayit Yehudi Party which they had then led to form their New Right outfit, they had narrowly failed to cross the electoral threshold.
The rabbi said they had been forgiven then and “for the sake of unity it was agreed to give them a place to lead the religious-Zionist community,” saying that his forgiveness had been a mistake.
“It needs to be made clear to them before they sign [a coalition deal] with Lapid, Labor leader MK Merav Michaeli, Meretz, and [Labor MK] ibtisam Mara’ana that this time we will not forgive and not forget.
“We will not vote for them in any situation after they fail. We will not give them any opportunity to merge with us [religious-Zionist parties] not even in tenth place [on the electoral list]. You are using your base constituency forever (apart from a few irrelevant extremes). We will guarantee this.”