Likud’s Edelstein sparks outcry in Knesset committee, accuses Haredi leaders of lying about support for draft law

By Sam Sokol 27 January 2026, 1:34 pm

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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"

MK Yuli Edelstein at a Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee meeting at the Knesset in Jerusalem, December 1, 2025. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

The Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee descends into screaming after former panel chair Yuli Edelstein (Likud) accuses ultra-Orthodox lawmakers of lying about rabbinic support for the coalition’s law regulating Haredi enlistment.

“When they sat across from me and said that the rabbis agreed, they lied brazenly,” he declares, referring to the recent airing of audio recordings of senior ultra-Orthodox rabbis boasting that the controversial legislation will not lead to an increase in enlistment and will only serve to put off any real change.

Edelstein claims that the only Haredi representative to be honest with him was Motti Babchik, a senior adviser to UTJ chairman Yitzhak Goldknopf, who he said had “told me the truth, even if they told you that they agree to something they don’t agree to anything.”

In the recordings broadcast by Channel 12 news, Rabbi Moshe Hillel Hirsch, one of the senior leaders of the stream of ultra-Orthodox Jewry known as “Lithuanian,” says the law is meant to buy time rather than fundamentally influence enlistment patterns.

“In the end, the law will fall after a few years, but we’ve gained years,” he could be heard saying.

Meanwhile, Degel HaTorah spiritual leader Rabbi Dov Lando could also be heard speaking, and even more bluntly, about the legislation, in response to a visitor to his home appearing to express concern over the bill. “What they are saying is nonsense. It won’t happen. We will not go to the army,” Lando said. “No one will go to the army.”

Responding to Edelstein, Degel HaTorah MK Yaakov Asher accuses him of lying, a likely reference to Haredi accusations that the former panel chairman breached a compromise with the Haredi parties over a previous draft of the bill.

Asher also slams Yesh Atid MK Meirav Cohen, who, like Edelstein, accused Haredi representatives of “deception,” declaring that she “needs to learn; this falls somewhere between shallowness and stupidity.”