Coalition lawmakers vote against bill to grant full academic scholarships to discharged IDF soldiers

Coalition lawmakers vote down a bill to grant full academic scholarships to discharged combat and combat support troops 55-50, prompting shouts of “shame” by opposition lawmakers in the Knesset plenum.

The bill, sponsored by former IDF chief of staff and National Unity party lawmaker Gadi Eisenkot, would have raised the government subsidy for discharged combat and combat support troops to 100 percent, a move that had previously been championed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party.

A previous bill granting scholarships to IDF veterans to the tune of two-thirds of their tuition passed the Knesset in 2022 under the previous government, after the program was initially introduced by the IDF in 2016.

According to the Ynet news site, the coalition had requested that Eisenkot delay the bill so that lawmakers could “examine whether this is possible from a budgetary point of view” but he pushed ahead with it anyway.

“The coalition proved once again that it’s all about petty politics, even at the expense of our heroic fighters,” National Unity chairman Benny Gantz, another former IDF chief, tweets following the vote.

“Now in the Knesset plenum: the ultra-Orthodox MKs whose children have not enlisted are voting one after the other against MK Gadi Eisenkot’s law on benefits for discharged soldiers. The draft dodgers and their collaborators are denying scholarships for our fighters,” tweets Opposition Leader Yair Lapid.

The government is more interested in “benefits for dodgers” than “benefits for the reservists who protect us,” agrees Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman.

The coalition’s ultra-Orthodox parties have pushed hard to pass bills enshrining the exemption of ultra-Orthodox men from military service and circumventing a High Court ruling preventing state-funded daycare subsidies from going to the children of ultra-Orthodox men who evade the draft.

In a statement after the bill was voted down, Likud lists multiple bills that it says it has passed to benefit soldiers “despite opposition by the opposition.”

“The members of the irresponsible opposition will not preach to us with another populist and baseless bill, designed to create spin for the media and not to help any soldier,” the party says.

National Unity snipes back, saying that “even with the long message, it’s clearly noticeable that you forgot one thing — a recruitment law for all.”

A separate bill, sponsored by Likud MK Moshe Passal, granting regular duty and reserve soldiers priority in making appointments to receive public services, passes 42-5 in its preliminary reading.