The proposed new IDF draft bill passed its first reading in the Knesset early Tuesday, with 63 MKs voting in favor and 39 voting against. This was the first of three readings it must pass before becoming law.
The Yesh Atid faction of the opposition voted alongside the ruling coalition, ensuring the bill’s passage.
MK Moshe Gafni (Degel Hatorah) and some of Shas’s members of Knesset initially left the plenum during the vote, and returned to vote against the bill only after making sure the coalition had the majority it needed to pass the legislation, with Yesh Atid indeed voting in favor.
The existing Israeli Defense Service Law expires in September after the High Court of Justice deemed it unconstitutional, and so the Knesset must pass an alternative law before then.
If the new law is not passed to regulate the exemptions of ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students, tens of thousands of them are expected to receive IDF draft orders.
The proposed legislation includes planned cuts to the yeshivos budgets and the use of economic incentives to pressure the Torah study institutions to encourage enlistment, but no criminal sanctions.
Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman, who heads the United Torah Judaism party, threatened earlier Monday to bring down the coalition if the bill becomes law.
“If the enlistment law passes three readings, we will quit the coalition,” Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman, who heads the United Torah Judaism part, said at the Knesset.
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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7 Responses
What message is that picture supposed to convey? You use it often…
We need Moshiah now, these gezeras are similar in effect to nazi Germany, they hound us and want to throttle Torah, it is pure discrimination against Jewish culture!
Eisov sone leyaakov, we all know it, they want us to leave limud hatorah and it should be a secondary agenda, and exchange it with patriotism, which is the perfect way to forget it completely R”L, it is about time to wake up and see who is the real enemy.
yowzah i agree with u 100%
ywn truly pathetic
Dear “ready now” as a grandchild of holocaust survivors i find your comments totally repugnant and disgusting.
Dear ytsytv, the Chofetz Chaim predicted the 2nd world war, as people mostly know, and added that after that, there would be a 3rd battle, even worse than that, but it would be ruchniyus rather than gashmiyus. When he realized that people were relieved to hear that, he strongly reprimanded them.
Surely you are familiar with the idea that killing someone physically is only removing them from this world, whereas killing someone spiritually causes them to lose both?
”…but no criminal sanctions.”
Wrong!
The law specifies that if 85 percent of the quotas aren’t reached for 3 consecutive years, the provision exempting chareidim expires, and ALL chareidim will be forced into military service.