From the Liveblog of
Monday, December 9, 2024
Liberman vows: Once opposition comes into power, it will cancel Haredi draft exemption law
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. 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"
One of the first things the opposition will do when it comes to power will be to cancel the ultra-Orthodox draft exemption law the coalition is currently working to pass, Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman declares.
Decrying the extension of reserve duty for soldiers who have already served over 300 days over the past year, Liberman tells reporters ahead of his party’s weekly faction meeting in the Knesset that he would push a new government to pass a universal conscription law so that even the grandchildren of Hasidic rebbes would not be exempt from military service.
The Mishpacha ultra-Orthodox weekly recently reported that the Haredi United Torah Judaism party is preparing two different laws: one to prevent ultra-Orthodox draft dodgers from suffering financial penalties and the other to dissolve the current government, giving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the option to choose between one and the other.
In October, UTJ backed down from an ultimatum to tank the state budget over the draft. Shortly thereafter, UTJ lawmaker Moshe Roth told The Times of Israel that he did not believe his party would topple the government “in the middle of a war.”
