Veteran Haredi MK Moshe Gafni to be removed as leader of UTJ’s Degel HaTorah faction

The ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party has decided to remove longtime lawmakers Moshe Gafni and Uri Maklev from its Knesset slate ahead of the upcoming election, one of the party’s top rabbinical leaders confirmed Saturday night, in a dramatic shakeup after the party failed to pass legislation exempting Haredi men from military service.

MK Yaakov Asher is expected to replace Gafni as chairman of Degel HaTorah, one of two factions that make up UTJ, and will head the joint slate, according to Hebrew media reports.

No major changes are expected within Agudat Yisrael, the second faction of the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox party, led by Yitzhak Goldknopf.

The decision to oust Gafni came nearly four decades after he was first elected to the Knesset in 1988. Gafni served almost continuously as a lawmaker since then and chaired the Knesset Finance Committee for more than a decade.

Maklev, who entered the Knesset in 2008 and is also considered highly respected within the ultra-Orthodox community, will likewise be excluded from the party’s slate, according to reports.

The office of Rabbi Dov Lando, the leading rabbinic authority of the Lithuanian Haredi community represented politically by Degel HaTorah, confirmed that the 96-year-old rabbi wrote to the two men on Saturday night to inform them that they would not be running in the October 27 election.

In the statement, Lando’s office said the rabbi “warmly thanked the men for their activity in recent years in total obedience with [religious leaders], and in particular in their fight for the position of yeshiva students” to be exempt from the military draft.

“However, due to the need to refresh the Knesset members, the two will leave the Knesset in order to bring in new representatives,” the statement added.

The shakeup was reportedly driven by an internal dispute over Degel HaTorah’s political direction and its relations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, particularly after UTJ failed to secure the passage of a law broadly exempting Haredi men from military service.

Gafni and Maklev have generally favored maintaining dialogue with the government and leaving room for political compromise. By contrast, associates of Lando have pushed for a more confrontational approach on the draft issue and other matters of religion and state.

David Shapira, a close confidant of Lando and the grandson of the late Lithuanian Haredi leader Rabbi Aharon Leib Shteinman, has reportedly led calls for the party to take a harder line against the government and to replace Gafni with someone ideologically closer to Lando.

It was not immediately clear who would be added to the UTJ list to replace Gafni and Maklev, but Ynet reported that several names were under consideration, including the deputy mayor of Bnei Brak, Menachem Shapira; the mayor of Modi’in Illit, Yaaakov Gutterman; and the deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Lazer Rauchberger.

Parties have until Tuesday, September 8, to submit their final candidate lists for the October 27 election.