From the Liveblog of
Monday, January 19, 2026
UTJ blames Jerusalem daycare tragedy on cuts to subsidies for draft dodgers
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. 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 ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party explicitly blames the decision to cut daycare subsidies for the children of draft dodgers for today’s tragedy in Jerusalem, in which two babies died and 55 infants and children were injured at an overcrowded, unlicensed daycare in Jerusalem’s Haredi-majority Romema neighborhood.
In a statement, the party declares that the tragedy “occurred despite clear and repeated warnings previously issued explicitly against the severe measures [against draft dodgers], which resulted in the families being unable to cope with the financial burden imposed on them, causing severe overcrowding in daycare centers that had not been closed.”
“It has become clear that these decrees for these measures have taken on heavy responsibility and guilt,” the party adds in an apparent reference to the High Court of Justice and Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara.
After the court ruled in 2024 that Haredi exemptions from military service were illegal, yeshivas harboring draft dodgers have seen their budgets slashed and the Attorney General’s Office instructed the Labor Ministry to cut daycare subsidies for the children of evaders.
The Times of Israel Community.