Leading Haredi rabbi said to snub PM after nixing draft bill, raising chance of elections

Rabbi Moshe Hillel Hirsch, an influential spiritual leader of the “Lithuanian” stream of ultra-Orthodox Jews, is refusing to speak to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about efforts to pass the coalition’s Haredi draft exemption bill, Channel 12 reports.

The reported snub of a phone call from the prime minister comes after the network reported that Hirsch has withdrawn his support for the controversial bill, which would preserve sweeping exemptions from military service for yeshiva students while purportedly increasing enlistment numbers among graduates of Haredi educational institutions.

“This is not the law we were promised,” Hirsch said, according to a Channel 12 report last night. “We will have to vote against this law.”

Netanyahu’s call was meant as an attempt to clarify Hirsch’s statement, Channel 12 reports.

Also yesterday, Rabbi Dov Lando, the spiritual leader of Degel HaTorah, one of the two factions of the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, vowed that no yeshiva student would be drafted into the army, “whether the authorities agree to it or not.”

A withdrawal of Haredi support for the bill would likely mean that it cannot pass, which in turn would almost certainly collapse Netanyahu’s coalition and lead to early elections. As of now, elections must take place by late October.

The bill has also drawn vocal criticism from the opposition and some coalition MKs who say it unfairly privileges Haredim and does not answer the IDF’s dire need for soldiers.