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Nahum Barnea

Haredim not at fault

Op-ed: Our government, rather than religious politicians, at fault for capitulation to haredim

In 15 years, when Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak play Solitaire at a Caesarea old-age home, the haredim will constitute 20% of Israel’s population. The question of their participation in the workforce and service in the IDF will turn from a moral to an existential one: Israeli society will no longer be able to carry them on its back.

 

It is doubtful whether this question will bother the old-age home residents in 2025: The manpower that will be serving them will have come from the Philippines. Too bad this question doesn’t bother them today.

 

The changes approved and yet to be approved by the government in respect to students at haredi institutions reflect Netanyahu’s priorities: He prefers the political convenience inherent in an alliance with Shas and United Torah Judaism over the potential social and economic benefits of a government premised on the two large secular parties.

 

One could have respected this decision had it stemmed from a long-term political vision aimed at annexing the territories to Israel. There are quite a few serious people in the Right who believe that the Greater Land of Israel trumps any other consideration, whether social or political. However, this is not Netanyahu’s declared goal, at least after the Bar-Ilan speech. This is certainly not the declared goal of Barak, whose party is an essential component in the coalition.

 

The equation is clear: The moment the Greater Land of Israel dream vanishes, the moral argument for preferring an alliance with the haredi Right over a pact with the secularist Center also vanishes. On the other hand, demographic changes turn the capitulation to the haredim into a disaster for Israeli society, and mostly for the haredim themselves. Their political power dooms them to a life of parasitism and poverty, contrary to what many of them want.

 

Voters to rebel 

The haredi politicians are right when they estimate that in five years, when the benefits given to them by the Netanyahu government expire, they will have enough political clout to pass government decisions that extend the validity of their extra rights and possibly even upgrade them. If the Likud won’t give them what they want, Kadima will. We can suspect that Kadima will give even more, on the dubious grounds that this is the price required for peace.

 

The debate that emerged following the government’s decisions is not about faith or religion. Nobody expects the haredim to abandon religion, heaven forbid, or to open the ghetto they built around themselves to other winds. Yet there is no reason for the State to sponsor a social sector that forces poverty and idleness upon its sons.

 

Shas Knesset Member Amsalem, who rebelled against his party, received many hundreds of sympathetic letters, emails, and text messages. Some of them were from haredim who are fed up with the perpetual life of idleness at the yeshivas and seek to join the workforce. Yet the peer pressure and government allowances trap them within the current framework.

 

According to a Talmudic dictum, the mouse never stole – the hole stole. That is, haredi politicians are not at fault: The government that capitulated to their rabbis’ caprices is at fault. The moment where voters of the large parties will say “enough” is approaching – if our leaders don’t show responsibility, we will. The time has come to help the haredim become a part of the State of Israel.

  

 


פרסום ראשון: 12.20.10, 18:12
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