UTJ head asks coalition for support after threatening to bring it down

United Torah Judaism chairman Yitzchak Goldknopf is calling on fellow coalition leaders to back his party’s funding demands ahead of a government discussion of the 2025 state budget — arguing that the “basic rights” of yeshiva students, children and families “cannot be violated.”

Goldknopf says in a statement that earmarks for ultra-Orthodox interests have not yet been added into the budget, arguing that the Haredi community is in danger of being “left behind.”

“As of this moment, the budgets of the Haredi public – which include the yeshivas, kollels, educational institutions, welfare, and the daycare centers… have not yet been settled as agreed,” he says, referring to coalition agreements signed with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Goldknopf’s public appeal comes only days after he wrote to Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs to demand more than a billion shekels for Haredi education. If he did not get the money he would oppose the 2025 state budget, bringing down the government, he warned. Failure to pass the budget by the end of March will trigger automatic election under law.

Asked by a reporter about Goldknopf’s threat during the Religious Zionism party’s faction weekly meeting in the Knesset on Monday, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich condemned his coalition partner’s “false populist campaign,” asserting that he had failed to obtain military conscription exemptions for yeshiva students and “is now looking for a way to explain to [his] public that there are no budgetary achievements.”

Goldknopf notes that a meeting tonight on the budget will be held without Smotrich, who is on a state visit to Washington.

According to the Maariv daily, Goldknopf is believed to be planning to resign before the final budget votes in the Knesset despite opposition from members of his party’s Degel Hatorah faction, who prefer to wait until after the passage of the budget if no law exempting yeshiva students from military service is passed.