Gov’t secretary Yossi Fuchs made an illegal threat against labor ministry accountant to force him to approve financial transfers to families for daycare subsidies, including to haredi families whose father had not reported for IDF service and were therefore illegible, the attorney-general’s office charged on Monday morning. In a sharply worded letter, Deputy AG … Read more
Labor Minister Yoav Ben-Tzur (Shas) accused Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara in a letter on Wednesday of “undermining the democratic foundations of the Israeli government” by ordering the Labor Ministry’s legal adviser to not sign off on a government decision aimed at preventing economic measures against military-age haredi yeshiva students, who act against the law by … Read more
The High Court of Justice’s ruling on Tuesday stated the obvious: that the government of Israel must abide by the existing National Service Law, which states that every 18-year-old Israeli must report for military service. The real question was how far the court would go and which tools it would use to ensure that … Read more
Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion made a significant decision at a Provisional State Council meeting not to draft yeshiva students, setting in motion a policy that would shape Israeli society and provoke decades of debate over military service exemptions. On Friday, early October 1948, two days before Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) 1948, the … Read more
Mayor of Modi’in-Maccabim-Reut and chairman of the Federation of Local Authorities in Israel, Haim Bibas, was interviewed this past Tuesday on Anat Davidov’s program on 103FM radio. During the interview, Bibas explained why he opposes the controversial new ‘Rabbis Law’. “Currently, an authority that wants to appoint a rabbi requires the city council and … Read more
Shas chairman MK Arye Deri is reportedly furious with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the latter ended a political saga that began on Sunday by deciding to drop a controversial bill that Deri was pushing for, due to opposition to the bill from within the governing coalition. The announcement that the bill would be … Read more
Protesters demonstrated against Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef on Tuesday morning in response to a recent threat of his that haredim would leave Israel if forced to draft into the IDF. As part of the protest, the demonstrators presented a “Dividing Israel” award, a reference to the Israel Prize that the rabbi is set … Read more
Likud MK Hanoch Milwidsky addressed a range of matters on the political-public agenda in a recent interview on 103FM radio. Milwidsky responded to Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, who claimed that “if the state forces us [the ultra-Orthodox] to go to the army, we will all go abroad,” by stating, “Rabbi Yosef does not consult … Read more
Israel’s Knesset on Tuesday began a marathon debate to approve a controversial updated version of the 2024 national budget. The national budget in effect is a package of bills that are passed together. The first is the actual budget of each government ministry for the year 2024; the second sets the government’s spending ceiling … Read more
Minister-without-portfolio MK Benny Gantz is the government’s “weak link,” and the US administration’s decision to host Gantz for meetings is an attempt to ‘drive a wedge’ within the government and the people of Israel, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said in a press conference on Monday after his party, the Religious Zionist Party (RZP), held … Read more
