Although United Torah Judaism – along with Shas – left the government in July to protest the lack of progress in exempting yeshiva students from military service, the coalition relies on the party for support from the outside.
Unlike UTJ, Shas remained in the coalition. When Noam MK Avi Maoz, the party’s sole MK, also quit, it left the coalition without a majority.
It’s not uncommon for a coalition that was formed with partners with divergent viewpoints to become no longer viable, and then certain members become a liability and bring into question whether the coalition even exists beyond its name if it needs propping up from the outside.
Such is the case with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s tenuous aggregate of far-right populists and anti-Zionist haredim (ultra-Orthodox), who have pushed their weight and outrageous convictions and will on the majority of the populace for far too long.
The latest affront occurred on Sunday when UTJ chairperson Yitzhak Goldknopf compared enforcing yeshiva students’ conscription to “placing a yellow badge on them,” in remarks during a debate on the coalition’s proposed contentious haredi draft exemption bill.
Goldknopf slams Haredi draft with ‘yellow badge’ remark
After claiming without producing any proof that there are more secular than haredi draft dodgers, the senior haredi politician went on to make a comparison between punishing ultra-Orthodox draft dodgers and the Nazi regime’s policies of singling out Jews.
“If there are those who study Torah, exempt them from everything. They should not be tied to quotas or targets,” he said. “In what country in the world do they take a rabbi and punish him? In Israel, we will determine how to punish them. A yellow badge, how can we do this?”
Comparing anything to Nazi atrocities is never a good look, but in the case of haredim avoiding the draft, it’s just obscene.
Goldknopf’s views are, unfortunately, not unique in the haredi community. On Sunday, when haredim took to the streets to protest conscription at enlistment centers, the offensive comparison reared its head as well.
Outside the Tel Hashomer base, an ultra-Orthodox protester told KAN News that “recruitment offices are like extermination ovens to us.”
Thankfully, as The Jerusalem Post’s Keshet Neev reported, Goldknopf’s insensitive and offensive remarks were condemned not just by members of the opposition but also by his coalition partners.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid responded, “How dare you? My father wore a yellow badge in the Budapest Ghetto simply because there was no Jewish army to protect his life. My grandfather wore a yellow badge when he was murdered in a concentration camp. What you said today in the committee is the dream of every antisemite, both a debasement of the memory of the victims of the Holocaust and a show of contempt for the IDF and its soldiers.”
Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Minister Amichai Chikli said, “I’ve encountered disconnected politicians before, but Goldknopf is truly in a league of his own.”
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said it was good that Goldknopf was no longer part of the coalition.
“There is no place in our coalition for disconnected and obtuse people who don’t stop harming the people of Israel, IDF fighters, and Torah scholars,” he said, sounding like a member of the opposition.
Given their disdain for the values of Goldknopf and his party, these leaders of the coalition would do well to rethink relying on their votes to keep afloat.
During the short-lived Bennett government era earlier in the decade, those same members had no qualms in slamming the “hypocrisy” of the then-coalition members for including the non-Zionist Arab party Ra’am, led by Mansour Abbas.
Now they’re doing the same thing, relying on factions outside the mainstream tent that don’t hold the values the country needs right now, to weather the critical challenges it faces.
There has been much speculation about whether Netanyahu will call for elections ahead of the scheduled November date.
Especially since Shas threatened on Sunday that it wouldn’t vote for the 2026 state budget without the prior passage of the coalition’s bill regulating haredi conscription and exemptions, that likelihood is even closer. As far as we’re concerned, it couldn’t happen soon enough.