From the Liveblog of
Wednesday, October 30, 2024
2 coalition members oppose Haredi push to salvage daycare subsidies for non-enlisting families
Two coalition lawmakers have publicly come out against ultra-Orthodox attempts to advance a law aimed at preserving daycare subsidies for Haredi children, further indicating a schism on the matter within the coalition.
The ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party backed away this week from a threat to derail government budget talks — which would have imperiled the coalition — if a law maintaining the widespread exemption of Haredi yeshiva students from military service isn’t advanced first.
UTJ has since pivoted to advancing the daycare subsidies bill instead.
Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara has ordered the payments halted, arguing that the government is legally barred from funding daycare subsidies for the children of ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students who are obligated to perform military service but are not doing so. The issue has been a sore point for the ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, community, which typically has large families but low incomes.
Likud MK Dan Illouz says on X: “There will be no enlistment [of Haredim] without significant personal sanctions. Exempting such a large group from the duty to serve in the IDF in such a critical period is a non-Zionist act that is unworthy of us as a nation — whether it be called ‘the enlistment law’ or ‘the daycare law,’ whose purpose is to cancel the daycares sanction and restore the funding.”
He says any cancelation of the sanction on daycare funding must be replaced with another meaningful sanction on those who refuse to enlist.
Meanwhile, Immigration Minister Ofir Sofer of Finance Minister Bezalel’s Religious Zionism party tells Army Radio that the daycare law “won’t be advanced before there is progress on the enlistment law.” He also slams Haredi political leaders, saying that “we have received a spit in the face from them on the enlistment process” and adding that the military desperately needs more people.
In June, the High Court of Justice ruled that there is no legal basis for the decades-long practice of exempting Haredi men from the military draft. A bill that seeks to regulate the issue, known as the enlistment law, is currently stuck in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, whose chairman, Likud MK Yuli Edelstein, has said that it will only pass if lawmakers can reach a “broad consensus” on the matter.
Sam Sokol contributed to this report.
