After five days of war in the Gaza strip, during which dozens of civilians in Gaza were killed (including children) as well as one Israeli woman, a cease-fire was declared and this round of mindless and useless violence apparently has ended. Netanyahu reportedly “basked” in the exceptional success of the operation and surely was most pleased that he managed to appease his fascist coalition “partner” Ben Gvir, who had threatened to quit the government unless Israel sheds some Palestinian blood.
However, his other “partners”, seeing how easy it appears to have Netanyahu succumb to threats to his government, did not allow him more than one day to “bask”. The budget is coming up and it is urgent because it needs to be approved before May 29, otherwise the government will fall automatically. So the Haredi parties in the government decided they need to make sure the coalition agreements need to be enacted and that means the passage of a 12.5 billion shekel (3.4 billion dollars) budget meant for Haredi institutions and benefits. While this exorbitant amount of money was already in principle agreed upon in the coalition agreements, the weakness of Netanyahu prompted the Haredi parties to up the ante a little and the sum under discussion grew quickly to 13.7 billion shekels (3.8 billion dollars).
This money (which is 10% of the State budget), will be mainly used to pay for Haredi institutions such as Yeshivas and so-called “independent” educational institutions which do not teach basic subjects such as Math and English, in order to make sure that these children will have no skills to integrate into Israeli society and remain under the control of their religious leaders. In other words, an ever-growing number of people who will not work, who will not contribute to Israeli society, and who will be dependent on the State for all of their lives.
Israel, with Netanyahu at its head, is knowingly creating a large population that will not work or study and this Haredi population will continue to grow at the expense of the Israeli taxpayer. (While in 1948, with the establishment of the State, the Haredim consisted of 1% of the population, that has now grown to 13%).
The Haredi budget will almost certainly be approved next week, because their threat to quit the coalition will be taken much more serious by Netanyahu. The Haredi members in the Knesset do not make decisions by themselves but are obliged to act (and vote) as their Rabbis will dictate them. Meaning simply that the future of the Israeli government is in the hands of a few Religious despots, some of who do not even recognize the State of Israel.
And to maximize the exploitation of Netanyahu’s weakness, by Wednesday the Haredi leaders had come up with an additional small demand. In their (twisted) logic, if the new budgets are approved and the sums allocated to their institutions will be increased to the exorbitant levels as is now proposed, why not demand that these sums will be paid retroactively from the beginning of the year? After all, we deserve it. And it will add “only” 600 million shekels (165 million dollars) to the budget as it stands now. Furthermore, making sure that Netanyahu understands well what this is about, it was reiterated unequivocally that not approving this demand would cause the end of the coalition. The opposition to this additional demand mainly from the professionals in the Finance ministry is fierce and there is a chance that Netanyahu will call the bluff of the Haredim and block this latest demand, but on the other hand, what is 600 million shekels when it can keep him in power? It does not come out of his pocket.
It does appear though that making scandalous demands is a contagious illness and the noise over the Haredi demands had not yet died down when Ben Gvir and his party member Wasserlauf, who is Minister of the Negev and the Galilee, threatened to quit the coalition unless the budget for Wasserlauf’s ministry be set at a level that is “appropriate” to be able to increase the Jewish presence in the Negev and the Galilee. Since this demand directly clashes with decisions made by Finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, a very close ally of Ben Gvir, the outcome of this latest spat is still uncertain, but may likely be solved by taking monies from such irrelevant items as Health, Social services or even Defense.
It is becoming more and more clear that this government, which was founded on the weakness of Binyamin Netanyahu, is and will continue to do most serious damage to Israel and its (secular) population. And this does not even take into account the fascist attempt to abolish the independent judiciary system Israel was once so proud of.
When will we wake up?
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