Leading ultra-Orthodox political figures and rabbinical leaders launched a wave of harsh attacks on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his national religious political allies on Thursday, following the Haredi Shas and United Torah Judaism parties’ exit from the government.
Speaking to the ultra-Orthodox Mishpacha weekly, Motti Babchik, a senior adviser to UTJ chairman Yitzhak Goldknopf, downplayed his anger at Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Yuli Edelstein (Likud) whom Haredi parties had previously said was chiefly responsible for their decision to leave the government, claiming he had walked back commitments made in negotiations on legislation granting widespread conscription exemption for ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students.
Instead, Babchik said that blame for the government’s failure to pass the legislation lies at the top of the command — with Netanyahu.
UTJ quit the coalition on Monday evening after Edelstein reportedly went back on an agreement to soften some of the harsh sanctions included in his proposed Haredi draft legislation. UTJ was followed by Shas on Wednesday, which bolted the government while remaining part of the coalition.
The Haredi parties have long demanded legislation reestablishing a decades-long broad exemption of Haredi young men from Israel’s mandatory military conscription that was struck down by the High Court of Justice last summer.
“I don’t want to defend Edelstein, but he hasn’t changed his position. He’s not to blame. The [prime minister] is to blame,” Babchik told the Haredi magazine. “Netanyahu continues to lie. He is an expert in dividing and causing conflict.”
He argued that if Netanyahu had simply approached Edelstein several months ago “demanding a draft of the conscription law, everything would have been behind us, but he simply didn’t want to.”
With Netanyahu, there are always “are excuses and explanations” and others to blame, but at the end of the day, the prime minister did “not stand by anything that had been signed,” Babchik added.
It was a mistake to trust Netanyahu and Justice Minister Yariv Levin, who told the Haredim that they should postpone pushing a proposed Basic Law on Torah study exempting yeshiva students from military service until after the passage of the coalition’s judicial overhaul agenda, the UTJ senior aide said.
They believed that this basic law would have prevented the High Court from striking down the legislation they were seeking. However, following the outbreak of mass demonstrations against the judicial overhaul, the Haredim were told that “the streets are burning” and “we have no possibility to pass a conscription law now,” he recalled.
Following the publication of his remarks, Housing Minister Haim Katz fired Babchik from his senior position in the ministry.
In response to his termination, Babchik blamed the prime minister for lying “to his loyal coalition partners who stood by Likud through thick and thin, only to receive ingratitude in return.”
Babchik’s rhetoric was echoed by Moshe Gafni, the chairman of UTJ’s Degel Hatorah faction.
In an interview with the ultra-Orthodox Kikar Hashabbat news site, the veteran Haredi politician launched a full-throated attack on Netanyahu as well as the national religious community along with Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party, charging that they have been “leading the war against Torah students.”
He also questioned the political partnership with that community’s political representatives, blasting them for insisting that it is possible to combine military service with Torah study.
“The ones who are leading the war against Torah students are the religious Zionists,” he stated, adding that “those who are leading the incitement against us… they are worse than the biggest haters of Torah scholars.”
Gafni further stated that recent events constituted a “bill of divorce,” ruling out any partnership on any issue between UTJ and its erstwhile national religious partners.
In response, Smotrich tweeted that Gafni should be ashamed of himself, recommending that he visit the military cemetery on Mount Herzl and “go visit the bereaved families” — as well as the national religious hesder yeshivas and pre-military academies, which combine Torah study with military service.
Beyond Smotrich, Gafni also launched an attack on Netanyahu and Edelstein, the latter of whom is also a member of the national religious community.
UTJ’s big mistake on the enlistment issue, Gafni said, was that it “agreed that the judicial reform would come before the conscription law,” adding that Edelstein “simply lied.”
“He should have told us that he couldn’t pass this law. He misled us — that’s one issue. And the second is the prime minister. He bears responsibility because he is the head of the system. He did not lie to us about this matter, but he bears responsibility and he needs to fix it. He made an agreement with us in which the main issue was regulating the status of yeshiva students.”
Representatives of Shas also harshly criticized Netanyahu and Edelstein, with party spiritual leader and for Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef declaring that the prime minister had lied that recruits could enter the army as Haredim and leave as Haredim.
“Why are you lying? How audacious of you to lie like that?” he asked in a video broadcast by Channel 13.
Yosef referred to a famous quote by his late father, Shas founder and prominent ultra-Orthodox spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who once called Netanyahu a “blind goat.”
“And I say [he’s] a blind fox and not a blind goat,” he continued, alleging that no ultra-Orthodox person can go through army service without “going astray.”
Yosef then turned to Edelstein, a Soviet-born Jew and former refusenik who served in labor camps and was eventually allowed to immigrate to Israel. The rabbi seized on the fact that Edelstein’s father ended up converting to Christianity and becoming a priest.
“There is one, whose father converted to Christianity and is a priest — this one grew up in a priest’s home and he’s doing all the trouble to the yeshiva students,” he said. “He’s with a kippa, and he’s doing all the trouble. Your father is a priest! You will come and harm the Torah students?”