Smotrich Responds to Ex-Con Deri's threat to topple government over Haredi draft

 

Responding to the ultra-Orthodox Shas party’s threat to vote against the state budget and topple the government unless it passes a bill exempting yeshiva students from military service, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich insists that he is “not willing to make concessions” on the issue.

“I really hope that we will succeed in bringing a good conscription law that will completely change the situation and that will conscript the Haredim into the army because they are needed. It is simply an existential national security necessity,” Smotrich declares from the Knesset rostrum.

Israel needs a “large, smart, aggressive [and] deadly army” and “we are not willing to make concessions here… We are presenting our Haredi partners and brothers with a real demand to change” and “take part in the great mitzvah and national, Zionist, Jewish, moral, and ethical duty” of military service, he says.

“I hope that we will find the balance and there will be a law and there will be a budget,” Smotrich continues, calling on the Haredim to at least pass the budget before dissolving the Knesset if an agreement cannot be reached.

“You cannot leave a country at war without a budget,” he says.

Speaking with ultra-Orthodox radio station Kol Baramah yesterday, Shas chairman Aryeh Deri gave Prime Minister Benjamin two months to regulate the status of yeshiva students, warning that if “it’s not regulated, we’ll go to elections.”

Following Smotrich’s comments, sources in the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party tell the Ynet news site that “the government is on the verge of dissolution” and warn that it, too, will vote against the budget if it is brought to a vote without the prior passage of a conscription law.