UTJ’s Goldknopf symbolically resigns minor role in PMO amid row over Haredi draft
Housing minister keeps his main portfolio but relinquishes 2nd job after outcry for his dancing to anti-Zionist song; he cites lack of progress on military exemption for yeshiva students
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"
Yitzhak Goldknopf, the chairman of the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, symbolically resigned from his secondary ministerial position as a minister in the Prime Minister’s Office, citing the government’s lack of progress toward passing a bill exempting yeshiva students from military conscription.
The move is hardly material, as Goldknopf retains his position as minister of housing and construction and, as such, remains in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet.
Goldknopf’s “resignation” came because of outcry over a video that surfaced Sunday of the Haredi leader dancing to an anti-Zionist, anti-enlistment song at his nephew’s wedding, drawing calls for his ouster by both coalition and opposition politicians. However, the move did not appear to be directly related.
Writing to Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs, Goldknopf stated that he had accepted the position in the PMO on the orders of his rabbis as a “guarantee for advancing the law regulating the status of Torah scholars.”
“Last night, the leadership of the United Torah Judaism faction, our teachers and rabbis, met and took upon themselves the responsibility for continuing to advance the issue. In light of this, I return the guarantee and hereby submit my resignation from the position of minister in the Prime Minister’s Office,” he said.
Goldknopf and several other members of his Agudat Yisrael faction had previously threatened to vote against the state budget, bringing down the government, if it did not first deal with the conscription issue.
A bill dealing with Haredi IDF service, or the lack thereof, is currently stuck in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, whose chairman, Likud MK Yuli Edelstein, has said that the needs of the IDF must come first and that the panel would only advance the legislation if it legitimately addresses those needs.
Despite his threats, following the far-right Otzma Yehudit party’s return to the government, Goldknopf lost his leverage and backed down, with all of his faction’s MKs voting in favor of the Economic Arrangements Law last Thursday.
At the time, the ultra-Orthodox Kikar Hashabbat news site reported that the Gur Hasidic rebbe had instructed Goldknopf to sign on to an alternate plan to pressure Netanyahu advanced by members of fellow UTJ faction Degel Hatorah.
That plan would see the entire UTJ party united in threatening to withdraw from the government unless it passes an exemption bill within three months.
In an effort to preempt such an ultimatum, Netanyahu reportedly spoke with senior Haredi rabbis linked to UTJ on Sunday — calling Rabbi Yissachar Dov Rokeach, the leader of the Belz Hasidic movement, the second-largest Hasidic sect in Israel; and Rabbi Moshe Hirsch, a prominent leader of the non-Hasidic stream of the Israeli ultra-Orthodox community.
According to Kikar Hashabbat, in his calls with Rabbis Rokeach and Hirsch on Sunday, Netanyahu argued that the timeframe is impractical and that a law regulating enlistment cannot be passed that fast.
Following the calls, Rokeach and Hirsch met at the home of Rabbi Dov Lando in Bnei Brak to settle on a new approach for the party. According to media reports, they decided that no public letter will be sent, with the rabbis instead choosing to negotiate with the government behind the scenes.
A High Court of Justice ruling last year found that there is no legal basis for the decades-long blanket exemption from military service for Haredi yeshiva students. Ultra-Orthodox parties, which are a key component of Netanyahu’s coalition and its parliamentary majority, have since demanded legislation to officially carve out some form of the exemption.
Many ultra-Orthodox Jews believe that military service is incompatible with their way of life, and fear that those who enlist will be secularized. However, the exemptions have been met with widespread opposition from Israelis who perform mandatory military service, at a time of war when hundreds of soldiers have been killed and hundreds of thousands of reservists mobilized.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
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