Shas spiritual leader: Edelstein should have stayed in USSR

Yahoo

3 days ago

'His [Edelstein's] soul is an abomination, he was a Prisoner of Zion and came to the land [of Israel], it is too bad he came, he should have remained there," Yosef said.
Former Prisoner of Zion and current Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman MK Yuli Edelstein (Likud), who is responsible for the bill proposal to regulate haredi IDF service, should have 'stayed' in the USSR, Shas spiritual leader and former Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef said at a conference in Beit Shemesh on Thursday morning.
Yosef's comments, a recording of which was published by Kol Berama Radio, could not be independently verified by The Jerusalem Post.
In the recording, Yosef is heard saying, 'His [Edelstein's] soul is an abomination, he was a Prisoner of Zion and came to the land [of Israel], it is too bad he came, he should have remained there. He is causing trouble for yeshiva students … Edelstein and Netanyahu, all this [political] right-wing is a lie. Evil villains!'
The comments came hours before Edelstein was set to meet with former Shas minister Ariel Atias and Government Secretary Yossi Fuchs at the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem, to continue negotiating over the content of the bill.
The three met a number of times this week in an attempt to find a solution that will end what appears to be a spiraling political crisis, following haredi threats to topple the government if the bill does not advance.
Members of Shas, which has publicly taken a hardline stance and demanded that the bill exempt a majority of eligible men from service, have taken a more pragmatic approach in private.
The prime minister is concentrating his efforts on reaching an agreement with Shas, since even if its Ashkenazi counterpart, United Torah Judaism's seven MKs, leave the coalition, the coalition will still enjoy a 61-59 majority in the Knesset.
Shas's Council of Sages will meet at the beginning of next week to decide on the party's next steps. The equivalent of UTJ's Hassidic faction, Agudat Yisrael, will meet on Thursday night for the same purpose.
Rav Moshe Hillel Hirsch, spiritual leader of UTJ's Lithuanian faction Degel Hatorah, said on Wednesday that he was 'close' to ordering the faction's MKs to quit the government and support a bill proposal to disperse the Knesset.
The FADC's legal team has been working on formulating the text of a new bill, which will reach the committee in the coming weeks. However, this may not leave enough time for the bill proposal to pass into law by the end of the Knesset summer session in late July, in which case the current law, which requires that all eligible haredi men serve in the IDF, will continue to apply as is at least until October. In any case, if the Knesset disperses, the bill cannot proceed.
The bill proposal will likely include draft quotas from the haredi sector that will increase annually, eventually reaching 50% of each graduating class, as well as sanctions on individuals who ignore draft orders.
Despite the fact that the previous legal exemption expired in June 2024, a vast majority of the approximately 24,000 draft orders to haredi men since then have been ignored. The IDF has already stated that it will not meet the goal it committed to in the High Court, of 4,800 haredi draftees in the 2024-2025 draft year, which will end on June 30.
Supporters have argued that the bill will lead to an immediate increase in the number of draftees and bring thousands more haredim into the army.
Critics, however, have countered that there is no guarantee that even with new sanctions, those who receive orders with the new law in place will actually respect them; and that there is no legal justification to enable 50% of haredim to continue being exempt from service, while secular and religious-Zionist Israelis do not enjoy the same privilege.
A recording of a conversation between Netanyahu and Rabbi Hirsch from March, which was published by Channel 13's Lior Keinan on Wednesday, revealed that the prime minister had requested to receive more time in order to ensure that the bill's legislative process remains legally sound.
The prime minister also told Hirsch that removing former defense minister Yoav Gallant and former Chief of Staff Herzi Halevy from their positions served as proof that he had acted to 'remove barriers' hindering the bill.