PM realizing Likud lawmakers unwilling to ‘bear the shame,’ Lapid says after ‘Rabbis Bill’ vote scrapped

After Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pulled a vote on the controversial “Rabbis Bill” from the Knesset agenda overnight, hours before it was due to take place, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid says the prime minister is “starting to understand that there are people in Likud who are no longer willing to bear the shame.”

“The next test will be the conscription law,” Lapid says, referring to a vote on a bill to lower the age at which yeshiva students are exempted from military service. “What is more important, political survival or the survival of the troops?”

Netanyahu’s last-minute cancellation of the vote on the jobs-for-rabbis legislation came after Coalition whip Ofir Ktz decided to unilaterally substitute two new lawmakers for members of his Likud party on the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee after their vocal objections stalled the legislation’s advance.