MK Moses
MK MosesIsrael news photo: Flash 90

MK Rabbi Menachem Moses of United Torah Judaism (UTJ) said Thursday that the hareidi sector has been dealing with an unprecedented financial attack, spearheaded by Finance Minister Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid).

"Lapid has brought “ten plagues” upon the public in general – and the hareidi public in particular – but the Torah is stronger than Lapid's plagues,” he said.

MK Moses blamed religious Zionist party Bayit Yehudi of aiding Lapid's offensive. “The Bayit Yehudi is providing the fuel for this hurtling train,” he said.

Lapid boasted at the Calcalist conference Wednesday that his party had cut child allowances and yeshiva funding. “We cut hundreds of millions from the yeshiva budgets and transferred them to the educational system,” he said.

Bayit Yehudi made a pact with Yesh Atid in the aftermath of the elections, and both parties entered the coalition as a bloc, leaving hareidi parties out of the government. There is great distress among Bayit Yehudi voters, however, over the fact that the cuts in yeshiva budgets do not discriminate between Zionist and non-ZIonist yeshivas. 

The Bayit Yehudi party fell into Lapid's trap, a source in the party told Arutz Sheva Tuesday.

“Joining him on this matter was a big mistake. Naftali Bennett thought that he was in [the elite army unit] Sayeret Matkal and did not realize that he had entered into the depth of the political world, where a man's word is worthless, promises mean nothing, and a brother is not really a brother.”