Don't check our attendance, MK Rabbi Moshe Gafni says, unless you check the attendance of university students. But what Gafni does not say is that university students are not exempt from the draft but haredi yeshiva students essentially are.
Haredi MK Says Unless Israel Monitors University Students’ Attendance, Don’t Monitor Our Yeshiva Attendance
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
Haredi Member of Knesset Rabbi Moshe Gafni, the most senior member of the Ashkenazi haredi United Torah Judaism Party, is upset because the IDF finally admitted publicly what many have known to be true – that a significant number of haredim who are listed as full-time yeshiva students and who were therefore exempt from the draft were really working and getting paid under the table and that haredi yeshiva deans were falsifying attendance records to cover for them.
Gafni and his fellow haredi MKs were quick to both deny the IDF’s allegation and to insist that any haredi of draft age who was not studying full-time in yeshivas should be drafted.
But when Gafni was reportedly asked by Independent Media Review and Analysis (IMRA) for his position on using technology – thumbprint scans, for example – to monitor yeshiva attendance, Gafni responded with a straw man argument.
He told IMRA that he was opposed to such technology being used to monitor haredi yeshiva attendance unless it was also used to monitor university attendance.
But what Gafni did not say is that university students are not exempt from the draft. In fact, until the Tal Law granting blanket exemptions for haredi yeshiva students was ruled illegal by the High Court of Justice and then allowed to expire at the end of July 2012, Jewish Israelis of draft age were exempt – except for all haredi yeshiva students, the disabled, and certain others determined by the IDF on a case-by-case basis.
The vast majority of Israeli university students serve full stints in the military before enrolling in university, and continue to serve in the reserves during their university studies.
Very few haredim serve in IDF.
Haredi yeshivas receive government subsidies for full-time students on a per student basis.
If the IDF is correct, every haredi “full-time” student who is actually working would still have his “yeshiva studies” subsidized by the government – meaning that haredi yeshiva heads could be stealing tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars from the state every year.
Related Post: Haredi Yeshiva Heads Allegedly Lie To Help Non-Yeshiva Students Dodge The Draft.