JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Shas chairman Aryeh Deri issued a sharp and highly unusual statement signaling a deep crisis within the right-wing coalition and a breakdown in relations with state authorities. At the center of Deri’s angry outburst are the economic and legal sanctions being imposed on Torah students and yeshivas.

At the beginning of his remarks, Deri launched a direct attack on the Attorney General, using unusually harsh language: “The dismissed and anarchist Attorney General is racing ahead with arrests and severe sanctions against Torah students. She is pushing the charedi public to the brink.”

Deri warned that the current policy would not pass quietly and could lead to drastic forms of civil resistance that the state has never faced before: “This will lead to a tax revolt, a detachment from the police, and a deep rift with state authorities. Anyone who cares about the future of the country must rise up against this madness.”

A significant portion of Deri’s criticism was directed inward, at his coalition partners from the Likud, Religious Zionism, and Otzma Yehudit parties. He argued that their silence in the face of the ultra-Orthodox community’s distress amounts to abandonment.

“I cry out and warn the Prime Minister and the leaders of the right-wing parties: if you truly wish to preserve the right-wing bloc, you must stand firmly against this persecution. Your voices are not being heard!”

Deri concluded his remarks with the famous phrase, “Silence is filth,” making clear that Shas seeks more than rhetorical escalation and is demanding action: “It is unacceptable that we should be the government’s punching bag, that everything sacred and precious to the Jewish people should be harmed, while you stand by and remain silent.”

Political observers assess that this statement amounts to Deri’s “doomsday weapon” rhetorically, aimed at forcing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to immediately resolve the issues of military conscription and yeshiva funding, while strongly hinting at the stability of the government itself.

In response, Government Secretary Yossi Fuchs wrote: “The IDF needs charedi soldiers, not charedi detainees in military prisons. As I warned all along, the Attorney General’s struggle against the charedi public, which escalates every week, from demands for arrest quotas, to demands to prevent donations to yeshivas (which currently receive no state funding for draft-eligible students), and all the way to demands for indictment quotas, will ultimately lead to a decline in charedi enlistment in the IDF, turn the entire charedi public into the Jerusalem Faction, and G-d forbid even lead to civil strife.”

He continued: “Until the expiration of Chapter G1 of the Security Service Law, which resulted in Torah scholars in charedi yeshivas, including the most dedicated students, waking up to the reality that failing to enlist in the IDF constituted a criminal offense, we did not see any effort by the Attorney General to criminally enforce the law against draft evaders who were not charedi. There were no arrest campaigns, no sanctions, and nothing of the sort. This is not equal enforcement; on the contrary, it is selective, politically motivated, and improper enforcement.”

Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Minister Yariv Levin said:”I join MK Rabbi Aryeh Deri’s call not to remain silent any longer. For a long time, I have called on the government and coalition to unite, rise above all internal disagreements, and put an end to the discriminatory judicial anarchy under whose feet many sectors of the public are being trampled.”

He added: “I call for an urgent meeting of the leaders of the right-wing bloc. The time has come for us to make a series of operational decisions that will return control of the state to the government and put an end to judicial anarchy.”