Shas spiritual leader links death of troops in Gaza to students’ neglect of Torah

In an open letter to yeshiva students on Tuesday, former Sephardi chief rabbi and Shas spiritual leader Yitzhak Yosef asserted that the deaths of five IDF servicemen overnight in Gaza may have been caused by the students’ insufficient Torah study and called on the Haredi community “to strengthen and grow stronger in Torah study.”

Yosef’s call came as his faction prepared to go to the barricades against the government over its demand that those engaged in such study be exempted from shouldering the burden of military service.

Mourning the deaths of the “dear soldiers” who “gave their lives for the people of Israel,” Yosef said that the Torah-observant community is “obligated to come to an account of why this trouble has come upon us, and perhaps it is nothing but the sin of neglecting the Torah.”

Four of those who fell in Gaza on Monday night were members of the IDF’s ultra-Orthodox Netzah Yehuda battalion. They were identified as Staff Sgt. Moshe Shmuel Noll, Staff Sgt. Noam Aharon Musgadian, Staff Sgt. Meir Shimon Amar and Sgt. Moshe Nissim Frech. A fifth, Sgt. First Class (res.) Benyamin Asulin, served in the Gaza Brigade’s Northern Division.

They were killed after being hit by three bombs remotely detonated one after another by Hamas operatives on the side of a road during ground operations in Beit Hanoun.

Netzah Yehuda was established to provide an accommodating environment for Haredi soldiers, although it has since also become a home for many national-religious troops looking for a religiously compatible environment.

Yosef has been an outspoken opponent of efforts to conscript yeshiva students and, like many other prominent leaders of the Haredi community, has asserted that mass Torah study is vital to the national defense.

In May, he stated that if the government arrests ultra-Orthodox men for dodging the draft, then the community will be forced to leave Israel.

Declaring that “our Torah protects the soldiers,” Yosef argued that Israel’s anti-missile defenses only succeeded in blocking attacks in the merit of yeshiva students’ studies. He has also called Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chair Yuli Edelstein “wicked” for demanding tough sanctions on yeshiva students who evade military service.

Waiting for Edelstein

Edelstein was widely expected to present lawmakers with a copy of a watered-down compromise bill regulating the conscription of yeshiva students on Monday, but has still not yet done so.

In response, the Haredi Shas and United Torah Judaism parties launched a legislative boycott, forcing the coalition to remove all their bills from the Knesset agenda on Monday and Tuesday.

The bill was initially supposed to have been ready in mid-June, but it was delayed by the war with Iran. However, despite the conflict ending on June 24, Edelstein has still not presented the full compromise draft to Haredi lawmakers, who hope to pass it into law before the conclusion of the summer legislative session at the end of July.

Speaking with Kan Radio on Tuesday, a senior Haredi political figure stated that Shas and United UTJ had “lost faith” in the coalition, asserting that “everything that was promised to us on the eve of the attack on Iran has been canceled.”

‘Five of our finest sons’

While the Shas party did not issue an official statement regarding the soldiers killed overnight, multiple lawmakers extended their condolences to the families.

Shas MK Avraham Bezalel opened Tuesday’s session of the Knesset Special Committee for Bridging Social Gaps in the Periphery with the recitation of psalms in their memory — while Knesset Education, Culture, and Sports Committee, chairman Yosef Taieb noted that his “brother is part of the same unit, a combat medic, and he treated these same soldiers.”

Social Affairs Minister Yaakov Margi explicitly noted the soldiers’ unit affiliation in a tweet in which he described the fallen as “five of our finest sons [who] fell defending the people and the land” and Labor Minister Yoav Ben-Tzur attended Moshe Nissim Frech’s funeral on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem on Tuesday.

Shas MK Erez Malul, meanwhile, harshly condemned Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, who on Monday railed against Haredi efforts to pass a law exempting yeshiva students from military service. Lapid stated at the time that Shas chairman Aryeh Deri and Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee member Yaakov Asher (United Torah Judaism) “have no problem sending [reserve] soldiers to go fight and die on one condition: that their own children not die.”

“Tonight the magnitude of the lie and the libel became clear — five fighters fell in battle in the Gaza Strip, four of them Haredi fighters from the Netzah Yehuda battalion. There is no limit and no bottom that Lapid will not tread in a desperate attempt to stop his party’s collapse in the polls,” Malul stated.

Speaking with The Times of Israel, Malul added that he knows the families of some of those killed and is personally pained by their deaths.

Ignoring their identity

While members of the Sephardi Shas party largely identified the fallen soldiers with Netzah Yehuda, their Ashkenazi counterparts elided their identities, issuing generic statements of condolence.

Both MK Moshe Gafni, who represents UTJ’s “Lithuanian” Degel Hatorah faction, and MK Moshe Roth, who represents UTJ’s Hasidic Agudat Yisrael faction, expressed their sympathy for the fallen without mentioning any connection to the Haredi community.

In a statement released more than 12 hours after the IDF announced their deaths, party chairman Yitzhak Goldknopf said that along “with the entire people of Israel, I mourn the deaths of five of our best holy sons. I send my condolences to the bereaved families who paid the most precious thing to them, and I pray that death will be swallowed up forever and that all the soldiers and hostages will return safely.”

He likewise did not mention that four out of the five soldiers killed were members of the ultra-Orthodox Netzah Yehuda battalion.

The choice of response to Sunday evening’s tragedy “shows the great sensitivity of the issue of ultra-Orthodox service in the IDF, precisely in the shadow of the intense discussions on the draft law,” explained Gilad Malach, a researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute who studies the ultra-Orthodox community.

“The avoidance of addressing the tragic fall of ultra-Orthodox soldiers apparently stems from the desire not to highlight the existence of ultra-Orthodox fighters,” he said — adding that by “doing so, they seek to focus the public discourse solely on the right of Torah students to continue their studies, without justifying or explaining the existence of ultra-Orthodox who consciously chose a military path.”

According to Yanki Farber, a reporter at the Haredi news site Behadrei Haredim, Shas is more open to acknowledging the existence of Haredi fighters because many of their lawmakers served in the army and the party enjoys support from not only Haredi voters but also traditional Israelis who believe in military service.

“There are lots and lots and lots of Shas voters who do serve in the army. That’s why Shas responded the way you saw some of their MKs respond,” he noted.