You kick my shins, I'll kick yours
Infuriated at Jewish Home's Ayelet Shaked's vote in committee on Wednesday for criminal sanctions against Haredi draft dodgers, Yated Neeman, the mouthpiece of the mainstream Lithuanian Haredi community, does an expose on the budget for 'settlements' in Judea and Samaria (link in Hebrew).
The article claims that the 'settlements' (which presumably does not include the Haredi 'settlements' of Beitar Ilit and Kiryat Sefer) are an economic and security burden.
The article claims that budgets are passed through hidden methods for 'isolated settlements' and for dangerous roads, and that doesn't even take the security costs into account. According to Moshe Gafni, a Haredi MK from the United Torah Judaism party and the former chairman of the Knesset Finance Committee, "the reality in which a company of soldiers [100-200 soldiers] guards one and a half 'settlers' at fantastical expense is a set way of operating."
"We're talking about the most sectoral group in the country," said Gafni. "They worry about themselves without end, and add paragraphs and sub-paragraphs [into the budget] that bring them billions."
The line beneath the headline reads:
So long as we are paying in the hard currency of damaging the Haredi yeshiva world - will their partners in Yesh Atid ask them 'where is the money'?The article claims that in 2011, the number of 'settlers' increased by 5% while the government's cost of maintaining them increased by 38%.
The article is one of three in Yated this Friday against the 'settlers' and it says that it's the first in a series.
During the debate over drafting Haredim, Gafni warned that he had information that would show how much the government spends on 'settlers' - a contingency of the Jewish Home party, and that he would release it if Jewish Home was instrumental in bringing about criminal sanctions for Haredi draft dodgers.
'You scratch my back, I scratch yours. You kick my shins, I kick yours.' Sounds a lot like the period of the destruction of the Second Temple (which was destroyed due to baseless hatred). And no, that's not meant to exclude Jewish Home's actions on the draft from the definition of 'baseless hatred' either.
Labels: draft, God, Haredim, IDF, Israeli Knesset, Jewish Home party, Second Temple, settlements, Torah
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:15 PM
2 Comments:
Awfully disingenuous, considering that the residents of Beitar Illit and Kiryat Sefer are less capable of defending themselves in a crisis, since so many of them have no security services experience. It is true that since Haredim are typically not pioneers, you won't find them in the tiny, brand new outposts/settlements that require the most military support.
You can't put a monetary value on land the settlers are preserving for Israel by means of outposts. They risk their lives despite the attempts to safeguard them. They also need to face the dangers of less friendly ministers, like Ehud Barak and planted, leftist, officers in the IDF and police.
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