A sharp split within the Agudat Yisrael party emerged Wednesday evening during a Knesset plenum vote on the "security box" budget.
MK Yitzhak Goldknopf voted against the budget alongside fellow MK Yaakov Tesler, while the party’s other two MKs, Meir Porush and Israel Eichler, chose to abstain from voting.
Goldknopf had announced in advance that he would oppose the budget, but Porush and Eichler consulted with their rabbis and ultimately decided to abstain.
Meanwhile, the Degel Hatorah faction also abstained following instructions from its rabbis, while the Shas party supported the budget.
Degel Hatorah, a Lithuanian-haredi party, traditionally runs together in a joint "zipper" fashion with the hasidic-haredi Agudat Yisrael, under the banner of "United Torah Judaism," or UTJ.
Following the internal split in Agudat Yisrael, a media battle erupted among haredi newspapers. Agudat Yisrael’s newspaper, Hamodia, launched a sharp attack Thursday morning against the split among the party’s Knesset members.
In its article, Hamodia claimed that “[Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu succeeded in dividing the Haredi representation, and the budget passed — even though he did not keep the written and signed commitment to regulate the status of Torah learners.” The paper added that the Prime Minister “achieved his goal without advancing legislation to protect the status of yeshiva students.”
Hamodia further reported that, as a result of the vote, planned nationwide prayer rallies protesting the Draft Law were postponed.
“It is impossible to on one hand abstain or support the government budget, and on the other hold protests against the same government,” the newspaper stated.
Conversely, Hamevaser clarified that Goldknopf and Tesler’s active opposition went against the decision of the Council of Torah Sages.
According to the Hamevaser report, during a faction meeting held after the representatives resigned their positions in the coalition, a proposal was made that despite the desire to prove they are not part of the government, if a bill related to security matters would be placed on the table, the faction would not sabotage the vote.
The newspaper added that at the time, MK Meir Porush consulted with members of the Council of Torah Sages, “and they supported this policy of not voting against government bills on matters related to the war.”