AG halts transfer of budget funds for Haredi institutions after contentious vote

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara on Monday blocked the transfer of some NIS 800 million ($255 million) to ultra-Orthodox educational institutions approved in a parliamentary ruse the previous night, asserting that the transfer likely violates High Court of Justice rulings against providing specific welfare benefits to Haredi men who have not enlisted for military service.

The allocation of the funds was inserted by the coalition into a legislative “reservation” to the budget late Sunday night, and since almost all reservations are submitted by the opposition, opposition MKs mistakenly voted in favor of the transfer.

In an update to the court on Monday regarding the state’s compliance with the High Court’s rulings on the issue of ultra-Orthodox enlistment, Baharav-Miara stated that it appeared the coalition sought to approve the funds in this manner in order to circumvent the court’s rulings.

The High Court ruled in June 2024 that ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students who had previously received blanket military service exemptions were obligated to enlist, since the legislation that formalized those arrangements had expired, and that by extension, there was no legal framework to continue financial benefits granted by the state to such students.

“Approval of the reservations in the aforementioned manner — that is, without legal and professional opinions — constitutes an apparent attempt to overcome steps taken to implement the [High Court] ruling on conscription, as well as other related judgments concerning the provision of benefits to draft evaders,” wrote Baharav Miara in her update to the High Court.

Following Baharav-Miara’s update, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party announced it would file a petition to the High Court to permanently block the transfer of the NIS 800 million for ultra-Orthodox programs and institutions that the opposition mistakenly voted for.

Addressing reporters in the Knesset on Monday evening, Lapid said that the passage of the 2026 state budget Sunday night was “the greatest theft in the history of the country” but that “that wasn’t enough” for the coalition, which “transferred hundreds of millions more to the Haredim through an illegal vote on an illegal amendment proposed by Coalition Chairman Ofir Katz.”

Yesh Atid subsequently wrote to Baharav-Miara and Knesset legal adviser Sagit Afik regarding the matter, “the first step in our petition to the High Court of Justice against the illegal theft of funds for the Haredi parties.”

Because amendments are typically filed by the opposition as a procedural tactic to delay budget votes, opposition MKs appeared to treat the measure as routine and automatically backed it, failing to notice that the coalition was also supporting the amendment. The added funding ultimately passed by a lopsided 107-4 vote before lawmakers appeared to realize their error.

In total, according to a tally by Channel 13, the move boosted allocations to Haredi educational institutions by more than NIS 1 billion, from NIS 4.1 billion ($1.3 billion) to NIS 5.17 billion ($1.65 billion).

Senior United Torah Judaism MK Moshe Gafni railed at the attorney general over her decision to block the funds, calling it “criminal” and accusing her of hating the ultra-Orthodox.

“The budget was approved last night in accordance with the law, with an unprecedented majority. Gali Baharav-Miara has no authority to intervene, this is criminality by any standard and her hatred towards the ultra-Orthodox public is visible to all. Ten measures of hatred descended upon the world and she took nine of them,” he stormed.