Deri: God ‘forsook’ Israel on Oct. 7, but massacre helped stop greater Iranian threat

“He [Netanyahu] sees it tangibly. On Oct. 7, we were in a state of humiliation, and he gradually witnessed the great kindness that God bestowed,” Deri said.

By Akiva Van Koningsveld, JNS

Shas Party leader Aryeh Deri said on Sunday that while God forsook the Jewish people “for a truly small moment” during the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, it led to the collapse of the entire Iranian-led terrorist axis.

“During a very brief moment, on Oct. 7, the Holy One, blessed be He, forsook us. We took an awful blow that we still haven’t recovered from,” Deri said in an interview with Israel’s Channel 14.

“So many casualties, we still have hostages—but it saved the Israeli nation that the former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the wicked and depraved, decided to go first and not to wait for the whole bloc.”

While slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah explicitly endorsed the goal of destroying the Jewish state, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reportedly approved Hamas spearheading the Oct. 7 assault without the full participation of Tehran’s Lebanese proxy.

“I see in this what the prophet Isaiah said in his prophecy: ‘For a small moment have I forsaken thee; But with great compassion will I gather thee,’” the ultra-Orthodox lawmaker told Channel 14’s “The Patriots” current affairs program.

“All of a sudden we found out—and the nation of Israel and the whole world found out—what Iran is. The Iranians lost all their proxies and were left exposed,” according to the haredi politician.

“God performed one more big miracle: that Trump was elected,” Deri continued, saying that “without Oct. 7, without Trump and without Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” the ongoing Israel Defense Forces campaign against Tehran would not have been possible.

In response to “The Patriots” host Yinon Magal’s question about whether he thinks Netanyahu has grown stronger in his faith amid the ongoing seven-front war against the Jewish state, Deri replied: “Absolutely.”

“He sees it tangibly. On Oct. 7, we were in a state of humiliation, and he gradually witnessed the great kindness that God bestowed,” Deri said.

Early on June 13, more than 200 Israeli fighter jets attacked dozens of enemy targets, including military and nuclear sites, in a “preemptive, precise, combined” opening strike against Tehran’s nuclear program.

Hours before the military launched the first strikes, Netanyahu visited Jerusalem’s Western Wall alongside Argentine President Javier Milei.

The premier during the visit placed a note in the wall with a verse from the book of Numbers (23:24): “Behold, the people shall rise up as a great lion, and lift up himself as a young lion,” according to the Prime Minister’s Office.

The IDF’s aerial assault on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program has been named “Operation Rising Lion,” after the biblical prophecy.