Lapid says PM, Smotrich playing ‘shameful politics’ upon reported concessions to Haredim

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid denounces Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich for engaging in “shameful politics” over a report that the pair had offered the coalition’s Haredi parties concessions on the 2025 state budget in order to secure their agreement for the postponement of the passage of a law exempting yeshiva students from military service.

“Now Netanyahu and Smotrich have a new offer for the Haredim: Agree to postpone the evasion law and you will receive money, lots of money, under the table. How much money? Billions,” Lapid tweets, citing a report by the ultra-Orthodox radio station Kol Hai.

According to the report, Netanyahu and Smotrich offered the Haredi parties a 15 percent increase in the budgets of ultra-Orthodox school networks, as well as funding for kindergarten teachers, under the government’s Ofek Hadash (New Horizon) plan.

The Haredim have long sought to become part of the program, which funds work in small groups between teachers and pupils and bumps up teacher salaries, among other initiatives. However, the program is currently restricted to state schools and not does not apply to independent Haredi schools, which do not teach secular subjects.

“Quite a few of the kindergartens are owned by the Goldknopf family,” Lapid tweets. “There is no limit to the corruption. They will be showered with the exact same money that could have been used to lower taxes for the middle class [whose members] serve and work.”

On Wednesday, United Torah Judaism chairman Yitzchak Goldknopf was quoted in the Haredi daily Hamodia as saying that “either they put off the conscription bill and we go to summer elections, or they insist on the conscription bill before the budget and the government completes its term.”