Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara has issued a sharply critical opinion regarding the proposed amendment to the conscription law intended to regulate the status of haredi yeshiva students.
“The law addresses the needs of the yeshivas rather than the urgent security needs and the need to ease the burden on those who serve. Its provisions create a negative incentive for enlistment and would effectively entrench long-term inequality,” the Attorney General wrote in her legal opinion.
She added: “In our view, the proposed framework falls far short of the required legal standards: its harm to equality is severe, it does not advance a legitimate purpose, and its components fail to meet constitutional proportionality tests.”
According to Baharav-Miara, “Bringing the law into compliance with constitutional standards requires extensive, fundamental changes, including the introduction of personal, effective, and immediate sanctions to enforce conscription obligations equally.”
Chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, MK Boaz Bismuth, responded to the opinion: “Nice try, Attorney Baharav-Miara, attempting to divert the discussion with this opinion precisely on the day troubling questions arise regarding your involvement in the Sde Teiman affair. A nice attempt-but not this time.”
Moshe Gafni, chairman of the Degel HaTorah party, reacted angrily: “The state’s executives-Baharav-Miara, Gil Limon, and their associates-who neither understand nor know anything about Torah study among the Jewish people, presume to voice their opinion on a law still deep in deliberation. Their clear goal is to prevent Torah study at all costs and to ensure that ‘their state’ does not assist yeshivas and religious institutions. They constantly violate the very norms they demand from everyone else but not from themselves.
The government’s decision regarding foreign students, who contribute greatly to the State of Israel, is dismissed with a single stroke of their pen, and they are never required to account for their actions or their unlawful decisions. Throughout Jewish history there were always those who fought against the holy Torah and its scholars, yet the Torah has endured and guided the Jewish people-while those who fought against it have vanished into the dust of history.”
Members of the Shas party also attacked Baharav-Miara. “In a transparent and embarrassing maneuver, the ousted Attorney General is attempting to strike at the world of Torah in order to divert attention from one of the gravest scandals in the country’s history, in which she is a suspect-one that gravely harmed Israel’s security and IDF soldiers. Her opinion is detached from reality and does not reflect the army’s position. The harsh political tone of her letter exposes her goal: to bring down the right-wing government and prevent her dismissal.
The bill is being guided throughout the process by the Knesset’s legal adviser, who will defend it when required. Unlike the Attorney General and her associates, who relentlessly attack every expression of Jewish identity, the people of Israel will continue to honor the Torah scholars who safeguard the Jewish flame for generations,” the party representatives said.