Politicians who shun haredi politcal parties solely because they are haredi
would face ten years in prison under the amendment proposed by MK Rabbi
Yaakov Litzman, Israel’s former (Deputy) Health Minister and a member of
the Ashkenazi haredi United Torah Judaism Party.
MK Rabbi Yaakov Litzman
Haredi MK Wants Politicians Who Refuse To Form Governments With Haredi Political Parties To Face Long Prison Terms
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
A haredi Member of Knesset has proposed an amendment to a bill that would criminalize refusal to work with or do business with haredim, Arutz Sheva reported.
Anyone who shuns haredim in this way solely because they are haredi would face ten years in prison under the amendment proposed by MK Rabbi Yaakov Litzman, Israel’s former (Deputy) Health Minister and a member of the Ashkenazi haredi United Torah Judaism Party.
Litzman is an ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who after teh January elections desperately tried to form a government with haredi parties despite the strong objections of his other coalition partners.
The amendment would expand an existing law against discrimination based on race or religion.
“As the most recent government was being established, it arose that there was a group that chose to exclude the representatives of a significant part of the public from the government, solely because they were haredi. This terrible statement was not only not publicly criticized, but became the basis on which the 33rd government of the state of Israel was established. This kind of exclusion has no place in a pluralistic, considerate, properly functioning society that knows how to respect and appreciate the other despite the differences between them.
“Therefore there is a need to uproot this phenomenon…Adding the term ‘boycott’ and including the haredi community in the definition of the crime, and in the punishment expected, is intended to warn and to prevent this from repeating itself,” Litzman wrote in an description of his proposed amendment circulated to fellow MKs.
Litzman’s amendment would in effect make it illegal to exclude haredi political parties from a government coalition based on the religious positions of those haredi parties. So when haredi parties oppose drafting haredi yeshiva students on religious grounds dictated by their senior rabbis, a potential prime minister would be forced to include those haredi parties in his coalition even though he supports the haredi draft.
Similarly, if a potential prime minister strongly opposed forced public gender segregation by haredim, gender segregation that has already been ruled to be illegal by Israel’s High Court of Justice, decided not to include haredi parties in her new coalition government because of that forced gender segregation, she would be subject to criminal indictment, prosecution and a potential 10-year prison sentence.
Haredi parties and the haredi politicians who populate them have long discriminated against the non-haredi population through illegal money transfers from the government to haredi schools and institutions and through barely disguised fraud committed against the government, along with multitudes of bigoted statements against non-haredim.
None of those behaviors are covered by Litzman’s proposed amendment.