Ministers advance Haredi daycare subsidies bill despite Smotrich’s opposition

A Haredi-backed bill aimed at preserving daycare subsidies for members of the ultra-Orthodox community is approved by the Ministerial Committee for Legislation and is expected to go to the Knesset plenum for a preliminary vote on Wednesday, announces a spokesman for United Torah Judaism MK Yisrael Eichler, the legislation’s sponsor.

The controversial legislation passes the cabinet-level body despite opposition from Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party, which earlier today stated that it would not back the bill unless it also enshrines preferential treatment for the families of IDF reservists.

The bill aims to guarantee that the children of ultra-Orthodox men who are obligated to perform military service but have not done so will continue to be eligible for taxpayer-supported daycare subsidies.

Previously the law allowed families in which a mother works and a father studies full time in yeshiva in lieu of military service to receive the subsidies, worth thousands of shekels a month.

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara recently declared the arrangement illegal after the High Court of Justice ruled in June that ultra-Orthodox men are obligated to serve in the IDF and that financial support for such students was also illegal by extension.

Addressing the bill ahead of today’s vote, Baharav-Miara’s office described it as “unconstitutional,” arguing that “the principle of equality will be harmed through state and institutional encouragement of avoiding conscription into the IDF.”

Responding to the bill’s approval by the government, the opposition Yesh Atid party states that “the names of the members of the ministerial committee who approved the law for financing mass evasion during a difficult and painful war will forever be a symbol of betrayal and a knife in the back of the middle class, the reservists, the IDF’s wounded and the memory of the fallen.”