Lapid: Government must respect High Court ruling on yeshiva funds, uphold the law for once

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid calls on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “uphold the law” in the wake of a High Court decision barring the government from providing funds to ultra-Orthodox yeshivas for students eligible for IDF enlistment.

“I call on the government not to cheat, not to deceive, not to find bypass routes, not to transfer hidden budgets, not to do all the things we know they will try to do,” Lapid declares during his Yesh Atid party’s weekly faction meeting in the Knesset. “For a change, they will be forced to act as if they are a law-abiding government in a law-abiding country.”

Last month, Netanyahu reportedly informed the ultra-Orthodox parties that he would “compensate them retroactively” if the court cut off their funding.

After Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara warned the government on Sunday against any attempt to continue funding yeshivas that harbor students who dodge their army service, Netanyahu’s bureau sent a message to reporters accusing her of “creating a rift among the people on the recruitment issue,” Lapid continues.

“The only thing that creates a rift in the people is that some people enlist and some don’t. Some die, and some don’t. Some are injured, and some are not. There are those who work for a living and pay taxes, and there are those who want us to pay them to avoid the army and not work,” he states.

“Israel has reached its tipping point. The IDF repeatedly says, ‘We don’t have enough soldiers.’ The defense minister said it, the IDF chief of staff said it. There aren’t enough soldiers and the ultra-Orthodox youth need to mobilize to defend the country,” he says.

H says he’s written to Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, urging him to “to recruit thousands more ultra-Orthodox soldiers [and] begin the great reform that the State of Israel needs.”