Liberman vows to quash Haredi-backed conversion, Western Wall bills

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said Sunday at the weekly cabinet meeting that his Yisrael Beytenu party would oppose bills that would ensure ultra-Orthodox control over the Western Wall and over conversions to Judaism, setting up a potential coalition showdown.

Liberman said a bill that would cancel a compromise creating a pluralistic prayer space at the Western Wall was damaging and his party would not back it.

“It actually causes terrible harm to Jewish unity and to the alliance between the State of Israel and Diaspora Jewry,” Liberman said at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting.

He also slammed a new bill that would require the state to recognize only conversions completed under the auspices of the ultra-Orthodox-dominated Chief Rabbinate of Israel. “What the [rabbinate’s] Conversion Authority is doing is distancing people from Judaism,” he charged.

He warned that the measures “will destabilize the coalition” and vowed to “oppose these initiatives aggressively.”

The conversion bill is slated to come before the powerful Ministerial Committee for Legislation on Sunday, where Liberman has vowed to vote against giving it government backing.

The measure, which was drafted last month by the Interior Ministry led by Aryeh Deri, head of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, appears to constitute an effort to circumvent a March 2016 Supreme Court ruling that allowed those undergoing private Orthodox conversions in Israel to become citizens under the Law of Return. The court did not take a stand on the religious question of rabbinic recognition of the converts as Jews, but did require Israeli civil agencies to treat them as Jewish for the purposes of naturalization.

Shas party leader Aryeh Deri (R) United Torah Judaism party Mk Yaakov Litzman during a joint party meeting at the Knesset on June 19, 2017. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

The ultra-Orthodox parties at the time vowed to submit legislation to neutralize the ruling.

The legislation would also negate the conversions of the Giyur Kahalacha private Orthodox conversion court, which was established two years ago largely in order to help Jews from the former Soviet Union who qualified as Jewish in order to immigrate to Israel but cannot marry under the auspices of the rabbinate. In Israel, the only route to marriage lies through the religious courts.

The bill would also mean conversions by the national-religious Tzohar organization would not be recognized.

Rabbi David Stav, founder of Tzohar, told Israel Radio on Sunday that “when only the Conversion Authority can carry out conversions, then it won’t feel any pressure to do conversions. The Conversion Authority is very suspicious of converts.”

He slammed the Haredi parties Shas and United Torah Judaism for “demanding that everyone convert by their standards, but then don’t recognize the conversions that others, like the religious Zionist, carry out by those standards.”

“Large numbers [of Russian-speaking immigrants] want to convert,” he said.

Illustrative: A Jewish man covers himself with a prayer shawl while praying near the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City during the Passover priestly blessing on April 13, 2017. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

On Thursday, Liberman said the Haredi-proposed bill would “lead to severe discrimination, and because of that we could lose hundreds of thousands of our people or those interested in converting, including those who served in the Israeli military.”

The bill, he warned, “would deepen the rift among the Jewish people. The role of conversion must be an acceptance of those asking to be part of Judaism, and not rejection and conflict between the State of Israel and Jewish groups.”

Yisrael Beytenu, a party whose strength relies mainly on the Russian immigrant electorate, said that according to the coalition agreements from 2015, any change in the relationship of religion and state must be accepted by all coalition parties in a special committee dedicated to this issue. The party says no coalition discussion has yet been held on the National Conversion Bill.

Haredi parties argue that they are not changing the so-called “status quo,” but rather restoring it after the 2016 High Court ruling.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needs the support of both Yisrael Beytenu and the ultra-Orthodox parties to keep his governing coalition stable.

Deri said last week that Yisrael Beytenu’s adamant opposition was misplaced. He vowed to pass the bill, citing the “agreement of the heads of [the coalition] parties and is intended to preserve the status quo. Minister Liberman will not torpedo the conversion law, just as he does not torpedo laws by other coalition partners.”

Yisrael Beytenu MK Robert Ilatov attends committee meeting in the Knesset, March 15, 2017. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)

According to a report on Channel 2, Yisrael Beytenu MK Robert Ilatov, the party’s faction chair in the Knesset, has written to coalition chairman David Bitan and Tourism Minister Yariv Levin (both Likud) telling them his party “strongly opposes” the bill and will veto the possibility of it advancing.

Ilatov wrote that the law would create “serious discrimination, it will split the Jewish people and it will significantly harm many Israeli citizens who have served and continue to serve in the IDF, among the immigrant public and among the Jews outside Israel.”

“It cannot be that a bill changing the existing status quo will not [first] be discussed by the special committee as needed, before being sent to the Ministerial Committee on Legislation.”

Ilatov demanded that all coalition members vote against the bill because it was advanced without fulfilling the conditions specified in the various coalition agreements that hold the government together.

Western Wall compromise

Yisrael Beytenu is also resisting efforts to do away with the Western Wall compromise, passed as a cabinet decision in January 2016, that would see the establishment of a mixed-gender plaza alongside the main Haredi-controlled plaza at the holy site.

Sunday is the deadline for the state to respond to outstanding High Court of Justice petitions from the Reform Movement, Women of the Wall and others over the failure to implement the agreement over the past 18 months.

Women from the Women of the Wall group pray at the women’s section of the Western Wall, June 25, 2017. (Michal Fattal/Courtesy Women of the Wall)

Sunday was also the date for the monthly Women of the Wall prayer service at the wall, which organizers said was accompanied by heckling from ultra-Orthodox visitors at the site.

According to a statement from Women of the Wall, “Approximately 100 WOW worshipers were held up at the entrance [to the Western Wall plaza] where…their bags and belongings were searched, including every page on every siddur [prayer book]. WOW worshipers met disturbances by Haredi women and girls who whistled, shouted and banged in order to silence the prayer. Despite the state’s commitment to prevent such disturbances, the teenaged girls, dressed in black with their faces covered, were not removed from the Women’s section and continued whistling, yelling and harassing WOW worshipers.”

Last week, the Chief Rabbinate demanded it be permitted its own legal representation in the High Court to protest the establishment of the Western Wall mixed-gender plaza, and ultra-Orthodox parties demanded the “total cancellation” of last year’s plan.

Jewish Home lawmakers Uri Ariel, the agriculture minister, and Betzalel Smotrich wrote to Netanyahu on Thursday, urging him to defy “extremist elements across the sea,” a reference to Reform and Conservative Jewry, and scrap the deal.

JTA contributed to this report.