Liberman slams UTJ for threats over yeshiva funds: ‘The fighters give everything, the dodgers get everything’

By Sam Sokol 2 March 2025, 10:52 am

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Sam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"

Yisrael Beytenu party chairman MK Avigdor Liberman leads a faction meeting at the Knesset in Jerusalem, on February 24, 2025. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman slams the United Torah Judaism party after it threatens to oppose the state budget unless 1 billion shekels in coalition funds is transferred to ultra-Orthodox yeshivas.

“The fighters give everything, the [draft-]dodgers get everything,” Liberman writes on X.

“The government is issuing 400,000 orders to reservists and at the same time is giving a billion shekels to yeshivas, in addition to the large budget they have already received,” he asserts, adding that “the October 7 government is buying political peace at the expense of the fighters.”

In a letter to Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs on Friday, UTJ chairman Yitzchak Goldknopf threatened to oppose the 2025 state budget, which would topple the government, unless it allocates more than a billion shekels in coalition funds for Haredi yeshivas.