"Right-Wing" "Religious" "Zionism"? Feh!

The government stoops to new lows

Today, the government passed its first reading of the disgraceful law to rate charedim learning in yeshiva as contributing to the nation, in order to pave the way for them to be exempt from army service and receive billions of shekels for it. This charedi initiative was supported by virtually the entirety of the Likud and so-called Religious Zionism, along with so-called Otzma Yehudit. Some government MKs accused those who voted against it as being “anti-Torah” or “antisemitic.”

(It turns out that I was overly positive about Smotrich yesterday. All he did was remove the paragraph explicitly drawing equality between yeshiva students and soldiers vis-a-vis all legal and financial benefits. But the law still rates yeshiva students as making a “significant contribution,” and the point of it is to exempt charedim from the army and give them money. Smotrich even punished the sole member of his party who voted against it.)

There is nothing “right-wing” or “religious” or “Zionist” about a government that formally exempts a huge and rapidly growing sector of society from civic obligations, from helping solve an IDF manpower crisis, and from helping relieve the crushing military and economic burden on others, instead cementing and encouraging a way of life that disdains and drains the state.

It’s against Torah. It’s against Zionism. It’s a horrible, horrible blow to the soldiers and reservists and their families. And it weakens the country tremendously, setting it on a clear path to economic and military collapse. That’s presumably why the Arab parties were happy to help the government out and refrained from voting against it.

Feh. My kids are going to be spending half their lives in reserve duty, and the other half trying to hold down a job to pay overly-high taxes, until the country finally collapses. May every MK who voted for this anti-religious, anti-Zionist disgrace rot in hell.