Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs said during a Monday Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee session regarding a temporary order to freeze the arrests of draft evaders that "the current legal situation is that there is obligatory conscription for all, the sanctions will remain. Under the proposed temporary order, nothing from the current legal situation will change."
Regarding the clause in the proposed order on yeshiva attendance inspections, Fuchs said that "we need fast supervision, and the Education Ministry will have to appoint more inspectors."
He claimed that he has "criticism on the fact that the haredi parties turn a blind eye to the fact that the students who don't study at yeshivas."
MK Meir Porush (UTJ) was incensed by Fuchs's comments, responded: "Stop your nonsense," and left the committee room in protest.
United Torah Judaism Chairman MK Yitzhak Goldknopf responded: "It would be best if the Cabinet Secretary would show a bit more respect to the yeshiva world and the haredi public. A statement claiming that yeshiva administrators and haredi parties are 'turning a blind eye,' together with the demand to increase the number of inspectors over the yeshiva world, as if they are the worst criminals, is inappropriate, certainly for a person who is in the government thanks to the haredi parties' support."
"It will be good for the Cabinet Secretary to deal with advancing solutions and upholding the promises made in the coalition agreements, instead of making unnecessary generalizations against an entire sector."
Opening the discussion, Committee Chairman Boaz Bismuth said the temporary order is “a tourniquet" intended to stop what he described as the deterioration caused by the current arrest policy.
Bismuth said the committee convened at the request of the Defense Minister and the Cabinet Secretary, adding that the arrest policy “does not strengthen enlistment, does not strengthen the Israel Defense Forces, and does not strengthen Israeli society."