After advancing the “Haredi deal”, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has changed course following the electoral damage it caused to Likud, and as part of the current election campaign.
In recent days, Netanyahu has voiced criticism and launched uncharacteristic attacks against the Haredi parties in an effort to repair the damage caused by the approval of the law preventing the arrest of Haredi draft dodgers and “Basic Law: Torah Study,” both of which drew criticism even from within the coalition itself.
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Benjamin Netanyahu and Shas Party leader Aryeh Deri in the Knesset plenum
(Photo: Amit Sha'avi)
The goal is to distance himself from the Haredi parties before the election and return to the political alliance with them afterward.
During the last term, and especially during the crises over the draft exemption law, Netanyahu avoided attacking the Haredi parties or the extremist factions in the Haredi public that opposed the law, even regarding those who do not study in yeshiva. Likud officials said Netanyahu’s legislative “bear hug” of the Haredim in the latest legislation caused electoral damage mainly among the mainstream and moderate right-wing public.
Netanyahu was especially careful to avoid criticizing the Haredim during the Knesset’s summer session, out of fear they would support a bill to dissolve the Knesset without coordinating with him. But after the Knesset dispersed, the official line changed.
For example, Netanyahu on Tuesday criticized on X the remarks of Lithuanian Haredi leader Rabbi Dov Lando against religious soldiers. “I strongly reject the shocking statements against IDF fighters from religious Zionism.”
When Mordechai Halperin, Army Radio’s religion and Haredi affairs correspondent, quoted associates of Lando, Netanyahu adviser Yonatan Urich rushed to respond and suggested that the Haredim stay quiet until after the election.
“Let us suggest this: The political operators on their behalf should shut their mouths for 99 days so we can win the election," he said.
Moshe Gafni and Netanyahu
It is no coincidence that Urich suggested the operators stay silent for 99 days. He, too, knows that the day after the election Netanyahu will need them.
But this rhetoric is neither accidental nor a one-time occurrence. In a podcast with Avi Shushan, Netanyahu suddenly remembered to condemn the slogan “We will die and not enlist,” even though it had been repeated at every Haredi demonstration throughout the last term.
“The phrase ‘we will die and not enlist’ is a terrible phrase that deserves every condemnation,” Netanyahu said. “It is out of the question. All the impostors must be dealt with unequivocally.”
After giving them everything they asked for, Netanyahu claimed: “I take a 20-kilo club and say to Deri and Gafni, ‘This is out of the question.’”
Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs also said Wednesday morning at the Katif Conference that “the draft law did not pass because Rabbi Lando blocked it at the last minute. Anyone who thinks that in the next term we will give the Haredim a blank page without sanctions and significant enlistment targets — then there will be no law.”
In the current government, even though the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, headed by Yuli Edelstein, drafted a law with sanctions and significant enlistment targets, as Fuchs described, Netanyahu worked to thwart it — and even fired Edelstein so he could soften the law and meet the Haredi parties’ demands.
During the Knesset’s final week of legislation, Netanyahu worked vigorously to complete the political deal with the Haredim revealed by ynet, though he chose to absent himself from the votes themselves, apparently so he could distance himself from them in the future. Now that the Knesset has dispersed, he understands the damage that has been done, is working to change course and is sending a message completely different from the steps he took during the current term.