‘Greatest theft in country’s history’: Lapid slams government’s funds to Haredim as defense deficit grows

By Sam Sokol 26 May 2025, 5:54 pm

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Sam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid leads a Yesh Atid faction meeting at the Knesset in Jerusalem, May 26, 2025. (Noam Revkin Fenton/Flash90)

The government’s efforts to find ways to transfer coalition funds to the ultra-Orthodox sector while significantly increasing spending due to the renewed military offensive in Gaza constitute “the greatest theft in the history of the country,” alleges Opposition Leader Yair Lapid.

While the ongoing war against Hamas has created an NIS 15 billion ($4.2 billion) deficit in the defense budget, the government has not engaged in any budgetary planning to minimize the impact on ordinary citizens, he charges during a press conference ahead of his Yesh Atid party’s weekly faction meeting in the Knesset.

The government’s discussion on the matter “did not even raise for a moment the possibility of closing one unnecessary government ministry,” he continues, stating that there are at least 15 “unnecessary government ministries” and multiple extraneous ministerial positions within other ministries such as defense and finance.

In 2023, the Finance Ministry recommended shutting 10 surplus ministries to cover budget deficits, advice the government ignored.

“The discussion did not even raise for a moment the possibility of cutting a single shekel from the coalition funds, from the billions they transfer to the evaders and the corrupt,” Lapid continues, predicting that if the war continues “prices will rise again, salaries will fall again, they will raise taxes on the Israeli middle class again.”

“The only economic discussion this government has had in the past week is not about financing the war, but about how they will manage to transfer another 1.3 billion shekels to the Haredim ‘under the table’ to compensate them for preventing them from evading the IDF. We managed to stop this transfer, but you know and I know they will try again,” he states.

“What we are facing is the greatest theft in the history of the country, and it is being committed during a war, by an irresponsible government that is abusing its power to oppress the citizens who keep it alive.”

According to financial daily The Marker, NIS 1.3 billion ($364 million) in coalition funds for ultra-Orthodox education are currently stuck and cannot be transferred. This includes hundreds of millions of shekels for yeshiva students who cannot receive stipends because they are eligible for military service but have not enlisted.