Opposition politicians slam wartime allocation of billions to Haredi institutions, settlements

Opposition politicians slam the government for approving the allocation of over NIS 5 billion ($1.6 billion) to causes including Haredi institutions, accusing it of funding draft evasion during wartime.

Millions of shekels were also allocated to West Bank settlements, raising the ire of left-wing politicians.

“While the people of Israel are fighting on the front lines, this government is busy looting the public purse,” declares former prime minister Naftali Bennett.

“Like thieves in the night,” the government “is now secretly transferring billions of shekels of political money to evaders under the guise of an emergency budget,” he declares. “They are transferring these billions not to defense, not to the families of the reservists, not to the reconstruction of the north and the south” and “they think that because the people of Israel are preoccupied with the war, they will not notice that they are looting us.”

“Those funds could have been allocated to security, reservists, health, welfare, education, and rehabilitation. But the Netanyahu-Goldknopf-Smotrich government invests solely in itself: draft dodging, settlements, and corruption,” tweets The Democrats chairman Yair Golan.

Ahead of the vote, Yesh Atid MK Vladimir Beliak, who heads his party’s effort to stymie the coalition’s budget, insisted that “the only way to maintain the standard of living and even improve it is through economic growth. And to encourage growth, at the very least, we shouldn’t be funding ignorance and idleness.”

The funds allocated were coalition funds — money allocated in the budget-planning process based on agreements struck between the parties during coalition negotiations at the formation of the government.

According to Channel 12, the funds, whose approval was opposed by Finance Ministry officials, include NIS 1.6 billion ($518 million) for Torah institutions, which are primarily Haredi; NIS 77 million ($24.9 million) for Haredi culture; and NIS 138 million ($44.7 million) for the Settlements Division of the Settlements and National Missions Ministry.

The Calcalist financial news site reports that NIS 49 million ($15.8 million) will go toward preventing students from dropping out of yeshivas — despite the fact that the government stated last year that starting this year, it would no longer finance the education of ultra-Orthodox youths who are studying at institutions that don’t have a rigorous curriculum and allow them to decline to perform mandatory IDF service.