The co-head of the Sefardi haredi Shas Party Eli Yishai said he believes
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu wants to form a new government
without Shas. Speaking on Israel’s Channel 2 tonight, Yishai
reportedly said he believed that there was only a 30% chance of Shas
joining the new governing coalition. Yishai also accused the Yesh Atid
Party’s leader, secularist Yair Lapid, of trying to “divide the nation
and wanting to destroy the world of Torah.”
Eli Yishai
Netanyahu Doesn’t Want Haredim In Government, Shas Says, But He Also Doesn’t Want Civil War
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
The co-head of the Sefardi haredi Shas Party Eli Yishai said he believes Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu wants to form a new government without Shas.
Speaking on Israel’s Channel 2 tonight, Yishai said he believed that there was only a 30% chance of Shas joining the new governing coalition. Yishai also accused the Yesh Atid Party’s leader, secularist Yair Lapid, of trying to “divide the nation and wanting to destroy the world of Torah,” the Jerusalem Post reported.
Yesh Atid won 19 Knesset seats in Israel’s recent national elections. Shas won only 12.
Lapid’s Yesh Atid Party and almost all of the other non-haredi political parties including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likyd-Beiteinu want haredim to serve in the military just as all other Jewish Israelis do rather than evade the draft as haredim have done for decades. Polls show that the Israeli populace overwhelmingly wants haredim to be drafted, as well.
But Netanyahu has needed haredi parties to form his government in all of its previous incarnations, and even though he does not need them to form the new governing coalition, he may need them to keep it in power or to form a governing coalition after the next elections.
So when Netanyahu parroted the language of haredi politicians regarding the haredi draft, it came as no surprise to Netanyahu watchers.
“[We must] significantly increase the share of the burden [of national military service, but only in a] responsible manner that will bring real change without dividing the nation and causing a civil war,” Netanyahu said when asked by Israel’s President Shimon Peres to form the new governing coalition.
The Sefardi haredi Shas Party’s founder and spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and other haredim have actually threatened civil war if the haredi draft is instituted. Yosef and other haredi rabbis have also threatened to move haredim en masse to a foreign country in order to avoid military service.
Some haredi leaders have hinted at a compromise. But that compromise is centered around drafting haredi “shabbabnikim,” “bums,” who have left or been expelled from yeshivas and who spend their days on the streets. Haredi yeshivas often show these shabbabnikim as active students in order to collect government subsidies in their names. The practice has the side benefit of allowing shabbabnikim to evade the draft. Haredi leaders would be willing to send those shabbabnikim to the military and forgo the government stipends yeshivas have been taking illegally in their names, (in some cases allegedly for more than a decade) to placate the government.