Lapid warns Haredi leaders they are ‘being deceived,’ Netanyahu won’t pass ‘evasion law’

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid warns the senior leaders of the ultra-Orthodox community that they are “being deceived” by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu because the premier will not pass what he calls an “evasion law” exempting yeshiva students from military service.

Addressing reporters ahead of his Yesh Atid party’s weekly faction meeting in the Knesset, Lapid slams Netanyahu for sending his people to meet with Haredi representatives in the Knesset and “begging them to give them another 10 days to arrange a mass draft evasion law for them, which would prevent the possibility of them enlisting in the IDF in time of war.”

“A prime minister with a shred of responsibility left in him should have told the Haredim [that] on October 7, everything changed. We are at war, we don’t have enough soldiers, your evasion is over,” he says.

Asserting that enlisting in the IDF “does not harm the Torah world and does not contradict Judaism,” Lapid directly addresses three of the most senior Haredi Rabbis: the Gur Hasidic sect’s Rebbe Yaakov Aryeh Alter; former Sephardic chief rabbi Yitzhak Yosef; and Rabbi Dov Lando, the 94-year-old spiritual leader of the non-Hasidic, so-called Lithuanian stream of ultra-Orthodoxy.

“Know that you are being deceived. Netanyahu knows that there will be no evasion law; he is just stalling for time to somehow get through the summer [Knesset legislative] session,” Lapid declares.

“All he is interested in is being still in power during his cross-examination in court, so that he can continue to receive ‘important notes’ in the middle of his testimony. He is selling you fairy tales and empty promises [and] cannot pass the law you want.”