Lapid: Disgraceful Haredi draft law is ‘a betrayal of our fighters’

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid accuses Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Boaz Bismuth (Likud) of betraying Israel’s fighters during a heated debate on the government’s controversial bill regulating ultra-Orthodox conscription.

“Boaz, what you have put on the table here is a disgraceful draft law. It is a betrayal of our fighters. It is a betrayal of everyone who fought and sacrificed in the last two years. More than 920 dead, more than 20,000 wounded, and you are betraying them today,” Lapid declares.

“Look around you. The prime minister is not here, the defense minister is not here, Deri is not here. Nobody wants to touch this law. They are leaving you alone to bear the disgrace,” he says.

Lapid argues that “anyone who says there is a contradiction between studying Torah and military service is disparaging the Torah study” of religious soldiers such as Hadar Goldin and others who have fallen in the service of the state, “and everyone who believed and still believes that defending the people of Israel is a holy mitzvah.”

“The army has said here time and again that it needs [the Haredim], but the corrupt [politicians] are selling the security of the country to the draft dodgers,” he declares.

“I tell you as the leader of the opposition and as the leader of Yesh Atid, I promise that this will not pass. We will stop this disgrace. Either here, or in the plenum, or in court, or in the streets, but we will stop this law. I give my word here in front of the cameras: This will not pass,” Lapid says.