UTJ’s newspapers stress party is not in a bloc; MK says it will side with whoever solves IDF draft issue

Several of today’s ultra-Orthodox newspapers linked to the United Torah Judaism party have articles that underline that the ultra-Orthodox parties are in neither the pro- nor the anti-Netanyahu camp. This comes after United Torah Judaism chose not to recommend anybody for prime minister when meeting with President Isaac Herzog last week, and amid efforts by Yisrael Beytenu’s Avigdor Liberman to woo UTJ and the second ultra-Orthodox party, Shas, into a coalition led by Yashar’s Gadi Eisenkot.

The ultra-Orthodox parties and their rabbinical leaders are furious with the outgoing coalition for failing to enshrine the broad exemption of ultra-Orthodox males from the IDF, although Shas is still publicly firmly in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s camp. Liberman, long deeply hostile to the ultra-Orthodox, is now urging “painful compromises” with the two ultra-Orthodox parties.

United Torah Judaism’s Yated Ne’eman daily, for instance, has an editorial stating, “We are not right-wing. Not right and not left… We go where the rabbis instruct us. All this talk trying to accuse United Torah Judaism of ‘leftism’ is a political weapon that belongs to the election campaign season… The question of whether we are right-wingers or leftists is simply the wrong question.” Yated is linked to UTJ’s Degel HaTorah faction.

HaModia, linked to UTJ’s Agudat Yisrael component, likewise responds to criticism from the right, and indicates its fury that an IDF draft-exemption law was not passed in the last four years: “Dear accusers, you keep saying that you [Netanyahu’s right-wing government] gave the Haredim so much… But you got everything from the Haredim — the reins of power, the government…. So who are the ingrates and who are the ones turning their backs?”

Finally, HaMevaser, considered the most hawkish of the ultra-Orthodox papers, says, “The Jewish faithful again reiterate: We are not entering any government without the status of yeshiva students being settled.” The article goes on to demand “guarantees” that the IDF draft issue will be resolved before UTJ agrees to enter a government.

Meanwhile, incoming UTJ MK Yehuda Weisfish tells Channel 12 from the Knesset: “We are in the ‘Torah Bloc,'” an “independent bloc,” rather than any politically partisan alliance. “We have to solve the issue of the Torah world,” he says, referring to the demand for an ongoing exemption from military service. “Whoever solves that great challenge for us, we are with them.”