Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara sent a letter to Labor Minister Yoav Ben-Tzur, instructing him to stop funding daycare centers for families with members eligible to be drafted.
"In the current legal situation, the state is no longer authorized to encourage, through government funding according to daycare eligibility tests, religious studies of conscripts. In other words, the lack of authority no longer allows for funding based on the fact that a family member is studying in a religious institution while being designated for military service," she wrote.
The Attorney General listed two main reasons: "Firstly, the direct link, under Chapter G1, which expired on 1.7.2023, between the deferral of service for the haredi public and their religious studies. This link was based on religious studies being the primary purpose for avoiding conscription, and the exclusive activity the haredi conscript was supposed to engage in, as one of the personal conditions required for receiving the deferral. As a result, with the expiry of the legal authority's source for the general service deferral, the legal basis for government funding intended to encourage the religious studies of haredi conscripts has also been nullified."
"Secondly, the daycare support tests serve as a tool for the state to encourage the integration of parents into the labor market. One of the activities deemed equivalent to work or employment-directed studies, alongside regular military service and national service, is the religious studies of conscripts".
The instruction was sent in the context of the petition by the Movement for Quality Government to the High Court of Justice.
Shas reacted harshly to Gali Baharav-Miara's move. "The Attorney General's decision to deny working Haredi mothers the daycare subsidy, three weeks before the start of the school year, just because the husband studies Torah - this is cruel judicial bullying and harassment of defenseless children. This is a disgraceful mark of shame on the forehead of a judicial system that is supposed to be the protector and aid of women who decided to join the workforce and contribute to the Israeli economy".
"The purpose of the subsidy is to encourage women's employment. Haredi women have the highest employment rate among women in the OECD. This unfortunate decision will set them back. The status of yeshiva students is currently being discussed in the Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee, and efforts are being made to reach a legal arrangement in cooperation with the defense establishment. Harassment of working Haredi women as a means of pressure is absolute folly that will not remove a single yeshiva student from the study hall and will distance any solution on the matter. Shas, under the leadership of Chairman Rabbi Aryeh Deri, will examine the legal tools at its disposal to overturn this outrageous decision, over which a black flag flies," the faction's statement read.
Jerusalem and Israel Heritage Minister Meir Porush said: "The legal advisory exposes the truth - it's not the military's needs that interest them, but an obsessive persecution of the world of Torah and the Haredi family. The judiciary is dragging small children into a political battle and acting to starve them, they have no boundaries".