Senior Haredi lawmaker: ‘I don’t understand what we are fighting for in Gaza’

MK Moshe Gafni, the leader of the ultra-Orthodox Degel Hatorah faction, declares that he does not understand what Israel is fighting for in Gaza.

Opening a meeting of the Knesset Finance Committee, Gafni tells lawmakers that he is thankful to God and US President Donald Trump for the end of the war with Iran, before expressing his condolences over the deaths of seven soldiers in Gaza yesterday.

“But I don’t understand until this moment what we are fighting for there. I don’t understand what the need is. What are we going to do there when soldiers are being killed all the time? I don’t understand this. We needed Trump here to come and say we are returning the hostages, stopping all these things, and returning to normal. But apparently we haven’t merited this yet,” he declares.

Gafni’s Degel Hatorah faction is part of the larger United Torah Judaism faction, which recently threatened to topple the government over efforts to conscript Haredim into the IDF. Lawmakers within the coalition and the opposition have been pushing for legislation that would end the longstanding exemption of yeshiva students from military service to make up for a wartime manpower shortage and ease the burden on reservists.

Far-right Religious Zionism party director-general Yehuda Wald declares Gafni’s statement to be “atrocious.”

“What is it saying to the 879 families of the heroic IDF fallen, that their sons fell in vain? What does he say to all the residents of the surrounding area who fear another massacre, that we will abandon them to Hamas terrorists?” Wald asks in a post on X.

“Only a person who does not send his sons to war can speak with such detachment,” Wald declares, calling Gafni a “shame and a disgrace.”

According to the Israel Defense Forces, as of 2024, over one in five combat soldiers is female, with mandatory conscription applying to all non-religiously observant women. Thirty-seven female soldiers have been killed in the war.