Haredi battle over conscription bill

By Yehuda Shlezinger, ISRAEL HAYOM

Two streams comprise the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox party United Torah Judaism: the non-Hassidic “Lithuanian” stream, represented by the Degel Hatorah faction, and the Hassidic stream, represented by the Agudat Israel faction.

It is doubtful that the average person in the street knows the difference between the two streams and between MK Moshe Gafni’s Lithuanian-style hat and Health Minister Yaakov Litzman’s Hassidic-style hat. For the average person, they are both haredim, and both should care about the haredi conscription bill, yeshiva school budgets and Shabbat observance.

However, anyone who has noticed Degel Hatorah representatives lambasting Agudat Israel members in recent weeks would perhaps be led to think the two camps are as bitter rivals as MK Bezalel Smotrich (Habayit Hayehudi) and Jamal Zahalka (Joint Arab List).

The essence is simple: The proposed conscription bill, backed by the IDF, is the best offered to the haredim in recent years. It does not impose any criminal or economic sanctions on individual yeshiva students, only general economic penalties for yeshiva budgets if they do not meet enlistment quotas. These quotas, incidentally, are relatively comfortable and achievable from the haredi public’s perspective.

However, war has broken out, mainly over two issues. The first is the law’s expiration terms, with the haredim seeking a mechanism to keep the law viable even if quotas are not met. Later they demanded that quota limits be determined by the government, and not in the law itself.

In the days before the Knesset began its summer recess, Lithuanian MKs scampered between the writers of the bill and their rabbis and concluded that from their point of view that the law can be passed. They have expressed unprecedented frustration in the face of the stubbornness from Litzman and his spiritual leader, the Admor of Gur.

The Lithuanians are livid. They believe Litzman did not do a proper job of explaining the benefits of the law to the rabbinical leader. They believe he did not fully explain how watered down the “sanctions” are and how possible it would be to meet the “quotas.” Above all else, someone failed to explain the law as a golden opportunity to put this burning, divisive issue behind them for once and for all.