Haredim should think twice before toppling the coalition - opinion

• Published date: 29 March 2024
• Author: YAAKOV KATZ
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

It is ironic because in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks on October 7 and the government's failures to prevent them, there was a feeling not that long ago that this is what will bring down Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government and lead to a new election. Instead, six months into the war, Netanyahu is climbing back up in the polls, and what seems more likely to topple his government is the standoff with his longtime allies, the haredim and the failure to agree on a new draft bill

In other words, it is not the failures that led to the most Jews being slaughtered since the Holocaust that will bring down the government, but rather one of the age-old religion-state issues that have long plagued this country. Basically, no matter how hard consecutive governments tried to avoid this issue, it has always come back to haunt them.

And the reason is simple – the situation in Israel is unsustainable. It was unsustainable before October 7 and the war that ensued but it is even more ridiculous today, when a certain segment of society, for the most part, does not carry the same burden as others. This is not only unfair; it is unpractical, and it holds Israel back from being able to thrive and remain secure in the decades to come.

The issue though is not only about the inequality in military service. It is also in the way certain rabbis, who receive salaries from the state or whose institutions receive millions of shekels in government funding, actively incite against the country.

This is the case with Yitzhak Yosef, the chief rabbi, who called a few weeks ago for haredim to leave Israel if they are forced to enlist and continued with the leader of an extreme haredi faction – known as the Jerusalem Peleg – who said last week that he would rather have his 30 grandchildren be murdered by Arabs then have to go to the army where they could potentially emerge secular.

It seems there is something of a competition among haredi rabbis who can be more extreme. On Thursday, Rabbi Moshe Tzedaka, head of the Porat Yosef yeshiva in Jerusalem's Old City, said that haredim are forbidden from serving in the IDF even if they are not studying in yeshiva, the supposed grounds for their exemption.

Yosef called for Israeli citizens to leave the country even though he receives a salary from Israeli taxpayers and Zedaka made his comment on Thursday even though his yeshiva receives 20% of its annual budget – more than NIS 2 million – from the state.

This makes no sense, and it has to...