UTJ’s Goldknopf says Netanyahu had promised Haredi military exemptions as part of judicial overhaul

Former housing minister Yitzhak Goldknopf, chairman of the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Justice Minister Yariv Levin explicitly promised ultra-Orthodox leaders that the coalition’s judicial overhaul would include a Basic Law enshrining draft exemptions for yeshiva students.

In an interview with the Haredi news site Kikar HaShabbat, Goldknopf says he was told by the prime minister and justice minister that the judicial overhaul would “solve the problem of the Haredi draft.”

He says they were promised both a Basic Law enshrining the rights of yeshiva students and an override clause to shield Haredi military exemptions from court intervention. “What did we get? Nothing. We were wrong. We failed,” he says.

The party leader also warns that enforcing the recent 54,000 draft orders sent to yeshiva students will lead to mass unrest. “This is a law they won’t be able to carry out,” he says. “The country won’t rest, won’t be quiet… there will be no peace here, one way or another.”

“If they want to shake the country, let them. You cannot harm yeshiva students. You cannot harm Torah learners. You cannot harm the yeshivas. You cannot carry out arrests,” he continues.

His remarks come days after UTJ quit Netanyahu’s coalition over the government’s failure to pass new legislation exempting Haredi men from military service — a move the High Court now says is legally required in the absence of a specific law.

“Goldknopf is saying out loud what we all knew — from day one, the deal was a blanket exemption from the draft for tens of thousands of healthy young men in exchange for dismantling the judicial system,” says Opposition Leader Yair Lapid in response to the interview. “Bibi sold out the serving, fighting, working public to draft dodgers and the corrupt.”