Likud MK: Finance Minister Liberman behaving like ‘history’s biggest antisemites’

Likud MK Israel Katz on Wednesday claimed Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman was “behaving like history’s biggest antisemites” by pushing reforms aimed at cutting government spending for ultra-Orthodox communities.

“What Liberman is doing when he threatens to cut the meat of the budget for ultra-Orthodox communities is victimizing the Haredim,” Katz said during an interview on the Kan public broadcaster.

“In the past, he said that whoever is not loyal to the state will not keep their citizenship, now he says that whoever is not loyal to the government will have their budgets cut,” Katz said, suggesting that after a campaign aimed at Israel’s Arab citizens, Liberman was targeting the ultra-Orthodox.

“Whenever Liberman is in distress because the cost of living is skyrocketing, he targets the ultra-Orthodox the way history’s biggest antisemites behaved,” added Katz, who previously served as finance minister.

Reports late last month said Liberman was planning a wave of new economic cuts and measures that would target the ultra-Orthodox community. A Channel 12 TV report said he was looking to advance three new measures: cutting the budget allocated to yeshiva studies by a third — from NIS 1.2 billion ($360 million) to NIS 800 million ($240 million); funding the private Haredi school system at 75% as opposed to 100%; and allocating benefits like daycare subsidies, rental assistance and arnona (property tax) discounts only to those who earn a certain level of income — cutting off those who study full time.

And on Monday, Liberman declared that there was no reason to fund Haredi Torah institutions that teach “idleness.” Addressing a faction meeting of his Yisrael Beytenu party at the Knesset, Liberman said that institutions that refuse to teach core subjects, such as English and math, can “do it at your expense, not that of taxpayers.”

“They sit there at the kollelim [where Talmud is studied], they come in the morning, eat a sandwich, drink coffee and talk politics, peruse some books, and go home. Idleness studies are not holy studies,” said Liberman.

Likud lawmaker Katz’s comments came days after Bnei Brak’s Rabbi Meir Mazuz branded Liberman and other ministers traitors who were “worse than the Nazis.”

Video emerged Sunday of Mazuz of the Kisse Rahamim Yeshiva giving a lecture a day earlier in which he claimed the government seeks to “choke Torah students” while “giving as much as possible to Arabs.”

“We have bad people. We’re waiting for them to pass from this world,” Mazuz said.

“They are traitors to their people, they hate their people. They’re worse than the Nazis — the Nazis love their own people; but [the ministers] hate their people,” he said, naming Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and Liberman as well as “all their friends.”

Lapid and Liberman have long been targeted for opprobrium by ultra-Orthodox leaders over their attempts to roll-back special benefits or exemptions granted to the Haredi community and religious institutions. Liberman drew fresh fire Monday after saying some yeshivas teach mostly idleness, threatening further cuts to funding over their failure to teach core curriculum subjects.

Mazuz, an influential Sephardic rabbi with ties to the leadership of the opposition Shas party, was previously slammed by Lapid, Liberman and others over his comments.

“I didn’t know that teaching the core curriculum, going out to work and doing army service is worse than the Nazis,” Liberman responded at the time, adding that in the Talmud it is written that the Second Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed because of “baseless” hatred among the Jewish people.