Government To Pay To Send 100 Chabad Missionaries Abroad, Foreign Ministry Outraged

The Shaked Committee’s decision now faces strong opposition from the Foreign Ministry, which said today that the Chabad arrangement is illegal.

The late Chabad-Lubavitch Rebbe Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson

Government To Pay To Send 100 Chabad Missionaries Abroad, Foreign Ministry Outraged
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com

The Knesset committee headed by MK Ayelet Shaked of the right wing Zionist Orthodox HaBayit HaYehudi Party which is writing the new military draft law decided last month that up to 100 Chabad-Lubavitch yeshiva students will be considered “civilian service” volunteers by the government as long as they do their year of Chabad shlichut (a year when yeshiva students study for ordination and help local Chabad emissaries run programs and teach locals) in a foreign country approved by the government. (North American and Western European countries are reportedly excluded from this arrangement.)

Those 100 Chabad yeshiva students would be exempt from military service and their missionary work abroad would count toward the haredi draft quota in Israel. And, not only that, their year-long activities would be funded by the government through the Sherut Ezrahi program for non-military national service, Arutz Sheva reported.

Chabad is ideologically close to HaBayit HaYehudi, is strongly right wing politically and pro-West-Bank-settlements. HaBayit HaYehudi hopes to be able to secure the majority of Chabad votes in the next election.

The Shaked Committee’s decision now faces strong opposition from the Foreign Ministry, which said today that the Chabad arrangement is illegal. Under law, only Foreign Ministry staff have the ability to work overseas as a representative of the Government of Israel. Anyone else must get a tourist visa or work visa from the host country and is not an official government representative.

Foreign Ministry officials also said the proposed Chabad program could cause Chabad students to be jailed for violating local law.

“We’re putting people in places that they shouldn’t be in under local law,” those officials reportedly said.

The Shaked Committee has been attacked for what many see as backroom deals orchestrated by Shaked and by Economy, Diaspora and Religious Services Minister Naftali Bennett to undercut the haredi draft and protect haredi yeshiva students from penalties for draft dodging in exchange for keeping the term of IDF service for Zionist Orthodox yeshiva students at about half that of non-Orthodox draftees and enlistees.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud Party have allegedly backed Shaked’s and Bennett’s deals in order to curry favor with haredi political parties whose support Likud desperately needs to form any future coalition governments.

Netanyahu openly said late last month that despite language in the proposed bill that, for the first time, applies criminal charges for haredi draft dodgers similar to what non-Orthodox draft dodgers currently face, no haredi yeshiva student would be jailed for “learning Torah” – meaning that haredim who refuse to leave their yeshiva studies serve in the IDF would be free to do so, in effect providing blanket exemptions for full time haredi yeshiva students.

But the High Court of Justice – whose rulings Netanyahu regularly skirts or openly ignores – has already ruled these types of blanket exemptions for haredi yeshiva students are illegal.

Comments

[Yosef ben Matitya]

Didn't they see the pricks demonstrating in the anti draft demo in J'lem with yechi flags and all?
Didn't they notice that the zaidy of little Moishy of Mumbai couldn't pronounce the words 'state of israel' when he was 'honored' to light a flame on Israel independence night?
Shame on Bivi.

[RWisler]

Are the shli'chim of the Jewish Agency that the State of Israel sends out to recruit people to make Aliyah also "civilian service" volunteers as these Chabad shlu'chim are?

[rocky]

The Mormons send out missionaries all the time. Mitt Romney served two years in France when he turned 18. I doubt that the Chabad missionaries will be trying to compete with the locals for minimum wage jobs. It sounds to me like a turf war between the Foreign Ministry and religious members of the Knesset.

Yes, it is another boondoggle for the Haredi, but why should anyone be surprised by that? It sounds to me like business as usual in Israel. My only objection is that US taxpayer money is being used to indirectly make a lot of these boondoggles possible. If Israel had to pay for its defense entirely out of its own pocket, it might have to slash Haredi benefits. Sometimes I think the US is doing Israel no favors by giving it a big allowance every year. It's like the rich businessman who gives his son a very large allowance every week and then is surprised when the teenager becomes hooked on drugs.

[S M L]

Rocky: good point.

[dapper danny]

So I guess Schneersonism and the Holy Tanya are now official Israeli theology.

[SimonF]

As long as they're in favor of continued settlement in the West Bank, the Right doesn't care what else anyone believes in order to view them as an ally.

[Franklin Clinton]

It is a vast improvement over the current Foreign Ministry employees.
Anyone who had to deal with the Israeli shlichim or Israel House know how incompetent and useless these people are.

In my area most of the Israeli related activities and advocacy are being done by the JCC not by the consulate people who got that job by protectzia (union/political connections) and not by competence.

[shari]

Franklin, sorry you had "useless" shlichim. We no longer have shlichim in our area, but from 1997 through 2003, we were blessed to have 2 wonderfully talented and creative shlichim, one of whom returns for periodic visits and is mobbed by old friends when he does so. I worked with both of them in my then job as Special Program Coordinator for the local supplemental Jewish high school.

[Yosef ben Matitya]

Yes, it is another boondoggle for the Haredi,

rocky,
these people can hardly be called jews, haredis? to propagate as part of their military service their heretic faith where the sovereign of Israel is a dead former rabbi.

[Another]

http://tiny.cc/chabad-and-you

http://tiny.cc/seven70