From the Liveblog of
Sunday, December 15, 2024
PM’s office: Yosef’s call for Haredi men not to serve in IDF ‘unacceptable, worthy of all condemnation’
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleSam 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"
The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemns former Sephardi chief rabbi Yitzhak Yosef’s statement that even Haredi men who are not studying in yeshiva should not serve in the Israel Defense Forces.
The Prime Minister’s Office says Yosef’s words are “unacceptable and worthy of all condemnation.”
“We will not accept expressions of insubordination from any side,” he says, a reference to former state attorney Moshe Lador’s statement last night that Israeli Air Force pilots should stop volunteering for reserve duty if the government revives its highly contentious judicial overhaul, as Justice Minister Yariv Levin has indicated he intends to do.
Netanyahu’s ultra-Orthodox coalition partners have pushed for the passage of a law regulating military exemptions for yeshiva students and other members of the Haredi community, after the High Court ruled in June that the dispensations, in place for decades, were illegal.
The Haredi religious and political leadership fiercely resists any effort to draft young men.
Yosef’s comments also garnered harsh criticism from the opposition, with Opposition Leader Yair Lapid stating that calling for draft evasion during wartime, especially by someone who was a state employee, “is crossing a red line that endangers democracy and undermines our future.”
National Unity chief Benny Gantz and Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman also slam Yosef, respectively stating that “calls for evasion are wrong, dangerous and illegitimate” and that such rhetoric constitutes “a serious blow to the unity of the people and national resilience.”
The Times of Israel Community.