The High Court of Justice ruling striking down the current arrangement for chareidim and IDF service has been met with a harsh chareidi response including threats to bring down the coalition and head to early elections. The heads of the chareidi parties are expected to meet in urgent session on Wednesday afternoon 22 Elul in Knesset to discuss the new reality created by the court’s ruling.
First, a joint faction meeting will be held for the two parties, Yahadut Hatorah and Shas, after which the faction leaders Aryeh Deri, Yaakov Litzman and Degel Hatorah Chairman Moshe Gafni will hold a separate discussion.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who is on a state visit to Argentina, also referred to a High Court of Justice decision, hinting that it would not harm the cabinet’s composition: “I have not yet learned the High Court ruling, but I learned one thing in politics. Faster”.
Netanyahu rejected the reports that he intended to dissolve the Knesset and go to elections that would be a kind of “referendum” against the backdrop of police investigations against him.
At a press conference in Buenos Aires, Netanyahu said: “It’s nonsense, I’m not going to go to elections. I intend to continue this term until the end and lead the Likud to a big victory in the 2019 elections.”
According to Netanyahu, Likud support is strong. “You have to come to see, not only at conferences, you will walk with me in the street and you will see that, I do not remember such support from 1996, remember that there was frustration from Oslo, not me or my wife.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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3 Responses
with all due respects to the holy Israeli supreme court, but their job is to decide
when a case comes before them if there is an infraction of the law or not, NOT if a law is acceptable to them.
The Knesset makes the laws, period, NOT the supreme justices.
Equality does not exist, and is NOT a legal banner for accepting a law or not.
Example, in Israel, we have secular schools, dati le’umi schools, charadi schools and Arab schools. Must we equalize them all to teaching exactly the same
subjects, in exactly the same language, from exactly the same books?
If the Knesset decided that people whose cars have a even license plate can
only buy gas on even days, and the people who have odd numbers can only
buy gas on odd number days, does that go agasint equality?
The supreme court holds itself above and beyone the call of their profession
and have slopped over into making and breaking laws. That is NOT their job!
The Israeli Supreme Court is actually acting more like a traditional Jewish court than an Anglo-American court. Under the Common law system, courts decide disputes and leave it to the legislature to make social policy. In Jewish tradition, a Beis Din is not just a forum to settle disputes, but is supposed to promote the generally agreed on social policies.
Unfortunately for the frum community, most Israelis support a policy of making Israel into a secular state where they can live their lives free from Torah and Mitsvos. Thus a policy that forces hareidim to give up on frumkeit or leave the country is good policy.
This ruling is just one more dip in the perpetual rollercoaster ride of Israel politics and the issue of deferments to army service for full time Torah students. The left, not appreciating the value of Torah study, wish to right the “injustice” of laws granting exemptions to service for Torah students. The court really has no choice, for a democratic society cannot tolerate preferential laws, and rules against such laws (and the Charedim too know this), but allows it to remain for some time so that the Knesset can make a new “just” law. The left then celebrate their “victory” and the Charedi leaders rant against the attack on the Torah and her students. Being a powerful political force that the government needs, the charedi parties negotiate within the coalition and eventually a new preferential law (with ingenious clauses that somehow appease the secularists within the coalition) is furbished and after some more horse trading and the wink of the eye it is passed (if not the govt falls and their are new elections). The Charedim then celebrate their “victory” and the left rant over the “injustice”. They petition the Supreme Court to strike it down and the rollercoaster ride continues. The ride ends when Moshiach arrives and all the Jews appreciate the Infinite value of the Torah and its study.