An unusual ultra-Orthodox threat against the prime minister led the ruling Likud party to support a controversial bill. United Torah Judaism officials said Knesset lawmaker Moshe Gafni told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday that if there was no majority for the daycare subsidies bill, United Torah Judaism would vote in favor of establishing a state commission of inquiry into the October 7 massacre.
Following the threat, the daycare bill passed its preliminary reading in the Knesset plenum, with 44 lawmakers in favor and 37 opposed.
The bill, initiated by Deputy Minister Yisrael Eichler of United Torah Judaism and already rejected about a year and a half ago due to coalition pressure, is intended to bypass the High Court of Justice’s order halting daycare subsidies for draft evaders. The proposal states that daycare subsidies will be determined according to the toddler’s mother, not the father, so if the father evades military service, the subsidy will not be affected — a move that would benefit Haredi families.
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Netanyahu and Gafni. The threat led to Likud's support for the daycare subsidies bill
(Photo: Danny Shem Tov / Noam Moskowitz, Knesset Spokesperson's Office)
The opposition withdrew all its proposals in an effort to embarrass the coalition, whose members rushed to the plenum to support the daycare bill. But not all coalition members backed it. Religious Zionism decided not to take part in the vote, while Likud lawmaker Dan Illouz voted against it. Shas lawmaker Yinon Azoulay confronted him afterward, shouting at Illouz: “Shame on you!” The bill was ultimately approved 44-37.
The Religious Zionism party said in a statement that party leader Bezalel Smotrich "refused the pleas of the prime minister and his people to support the daycare bill. When there is no draft law and the Haredim are unwilling to enlist, we are not part of this. The Haredim flirt with the left and oppose the draft law and we are not willing to accept that. Religious Zionism will not be the Haredim’s next sucker. They have finished off the draft and are still demanding the daycare law? That is absurd.”
Illouz called the daycare subsidies bill "a draft-bypass law intended to perpetuate the exemption and allow political deal-making to keep funding the nonparticipation of tens of thousands of young men in the burden of service. I will not support a law that removes the only incentive a young Haredi man has to enlist.”
United Torah Judaism chairman Yitzhak Goldknopf attacked Religious Zionism. “Smotrich’s abstention exposes his true face," he said. "When he comes again to scrape together votes in the Haredi sector, the public will remember that at the moment of truth, Haredi families mattered to him like last year’s snow. As far as he is concerned, Haredi children are just another tool in the political game to cross the electoral threshold.”
After the bill passed its preliminary reading, Eichler praised the Knesset vote. “The daycare bill I proposed many long months ago enshrines the working mother’s right to a daycare discount regardless of the husband’s actions. The Knesset’s vote in favor of the bill is an important ray of light amid the darkness of the persecution of the entire Haredi public. This is important news for thousands of families,” he said.
His party colleague, Knesset lawmaker Meir Porush of United Torah Judaism, said that "approval of the bill is a significant step toward correcting the terrible injustice done to the families of Torah learners. It is shameful that opposition lawmakers, alongside a few from the coalition, chose to harm small children in this way.”
The October Council responded to the Haredi threat to support a state commission of inquiry if the government could not garner support for the daycare subsidies bill.
“A state commission of inquiry will be established because it is the right and just thing to do, not as horse-trading of money over the blood of the fallen. We expect all 120 Knesset members to vote in favor of establishing a state commission of inquiry, nearly 1,000 days late, a delay that endangers the continued existence of the State of Israel. If we do not draw lessons and fix what needs to be fixed, the next massacre is already around the corner.”
Meanwhile, the bill to dissolve the Knesset will be brought to a first-reading vote Monday after a committee discussion that morning. It will then return to the committee before final approval in second and third readings. Meanwhile, there is still no agreed upon election date.
Two weeks ago, a dramatic statement was issued by Rabbi Dov Lando, the spiritual leader of Degel HaTorah party and of the Lithuanian Haredi public. He told the party’s Knesset members that they should work to dissolve the Knesset. “We no longer have faith in Netanyahu,” he made clear at the end of a consultation at his home with the lawmakers, after the prime minister and his associates spoke with the Haredi parties and conveyed the message that there was currently no feasibility for passing the draft exemption law in its present form.
In a handwritten letter Lando sent to the lawmakers, he wrote: “We have no confidence in the prime minister. We no longer feel like his partners. We are not obligated to him. From now on, we will do only what we think is good for Haredi Judaism, and in our view elections are needed as soon as possible. All kinds of talk about a bloc no longer exist.”