Opposition furious at 11th-hour transfer of hundreds of millions to Haredi education
‘We didn’t have time to read, understand, study the material,’ complains MK Beliak, day after Finance Committee pushed through extra budgets. Opposition weighs High Court petition
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 Yesh Atid party is mulling legal action after the Knesset Finance Committee approved budget transfers worth hundreds of millions of shekels to Haredi schools in a contentious late-night vote just as the calendar turned to 2025, an MK from the opposition party said Wednesday, complaining that a raft of budget moves were shoved through before lawmakers had a chance to review the hefty proposals.
The last-minute transfers approved Tuesday night also included NIS 4.5 billion ($1.2 billion) for the Education Ministry, NIS 3.63 billion ($995 million) for National Insurance allocations and NIS 2.36 billion ($646 million) for the Health Ministry.
Also included was NIS 50 million ($13.7 million) for the Religious Services Ministry to fulfill coalition promises relating to “the construction of religious institutions [and the] operation and development of holy places.”
The vote occurred after the cutoff for locking in budget changes in the Finance Ministry’s computer systems ahead of the new year, prompting Knesset legal adviser Sagit Afik to tell lawmakers that their budget requests would “not be able to be implemented due to the late hour.”
Such budget transfers should occur before the year’s end, as they cannot go through once the ministry shuts down its systems ahead of New Year’s Eve, proving the move to be a significant technical hurdle.
Afik declared at the time: “The fact that the committee chooses to continue working even at this hour is a very problematic precedent, both in terms of relations with the government and due to circumventing its procedures.”
Despite this, a Finance Ministry representative told lawmakers that efforts were being made to keep the computer systems ready for last-minute changes. Committee member Vladimir Beliak (Yesh Atid) later confirmed that the money was indeed transferred in the end.
While transfers late in the year are not uncommon, opposition MKs protested that they had only been provided with the hundreds of pages detailing the proposed changes on Monday evening, making it impossible to fully review what they were voting on as the committee rushed to okay the transfers.
Speaking with The Times of Israel on Wednesday afternoon, MK Beliak complained that Finance Ministry representatives had failed to provide MKs with answers to their questions — and expressed concern over what may have been hidden in the massive proposal that lawmakers did not have time to read through.
“We didn’t have time to really read, understand, study the material, and even during the discussion we didn’t receive answers to all the questions we asked at the time,” he said.
A spokesperson for Finance Committee chairman Moshe Gafni (United Torah Judaism) did not respond to a request for comment.
According to Beliak, who has been tasked by Opposition Leader Yair Lapid with leading the party’s fight against the 2025 state budget, “close to half a billion shekels” ($137 million) were earmarked for Haredi schools, including ones that do not teach core subjects such as math and English.
Gafni argued the move “closed the gaps in the budget for the Haredi education sector.”
Education funding
The transfer included an additional NIS 2.67 billion ($731 million) for elementary and middle school teachers’ salaries and NIS 2.33 billion ($638 million) for salaries related to special education services, due to “a significant increase in the amount of eligible students,” according to a statement by the Finance Committee spokesperson.
In addition, there was also the NIS 819 million ($224 million) necessary to implement wage increases for high school teachers, per an agreement with the Teachers’ Union signed after a strike at the beginning of the school year.
Following the 2022 general election, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised ultra-Orthodox political parties unprecedented billions for private, non-supervised educational institutions, which do not teach core subjects. The earmarks sparked loud protests from opposition politicians but to little avail.
An amended 2024 wartime budget passed last January kept billions in special funding for ultra-Orthodox education intact even as the government implemented painful belt-tightening measures to cover the cost of the conflicts in Gaza and on the northern border. The 2025 budget, if given final approval, will implement significant cuts to healthcare, education and social services to the tune of hundreds of millions of shekels.
Yesh Atid is “considering challenging” the last minute allocations by petitioning the High Court of Justice,” Beliak stated, questioning both the propriety of the allocation process and legality of the appropriations for some of the ultra-Orthodox schools receiving money, given recent criticism of their conduct.
In a 2020 report, the accountant general pointed to significant problems with how the finances of Haredi schools have been handled. And in August 2024, the Finance Ministry informed two Haredi education systems with state funding and huge deficits that they would be cut off from state-controlled bank accounts and budget-related computer systems on September 1.
Addressing the State Control Committee in April, a representative of the State Comptroller’s Office complained of what a committee spokesperson described as the Education Ministry’s “limited supervision” of the Haredi school system.
Opposing the 2025 budget
On Tuesday evening, Netanyahu launched a scathing attack on Itamar Ben Gvir, after the national security minister and all but one of the MKs from Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party voted against an important budget-related bill in the Knesset.
To make sure the legislation passed and to quash the internal revolt led by Ben Gvir and ultra-Orthodox MKs, the prime minister was forced to leave his hospital bed, against medical advice, two days after undergoing prostate surgery.
Asked if he believed that the internal coalition bickering over the budget could present the opposition with a chance to prevent its passage, Beliak replied that “there are so many conflicts and fights in the coalition that in the end it will tear them apart from within.
“Our goal is to widen the cracks as much as possible and be there at the right moment and knock them down,” he said.
