As throughout the entire process, the responses to the orders as well as the proposals for a draft law are coming in retrospect

Photo: Flash90

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Chaos has returned to the Knesset corridors. The coalition is imposing strict party discipline ahead of the customary Monday no-confidence votes in a desperate bid to survive, even as the chareidi parties boycott votes on government bills in protest over the draft.

The chareidim are following through on their threat to block coalition legislation — including a bill that would split the attorney general’s roles as government legal advisor and chief state prosecutor into two separate positions — for as long as the legal status of yeshivah students remains unresolved. This last-ditch attempt is only spurring the attorney general to issue new draconian measures against Torah learners every week, from issuing arrest warrants for yeshivah students to keeping children of avreichim out of day care centers.

But the real confidence vote is occurring not in the Knesset plenum, but in the yeshivah study halls, during bein hasdorim, and in conversations between bochurim in the small hours of the night.

“Azharah chamurah — a grave warning,” screamed a large sign hung in the heichal of the Ohr Yisrael yeshivah in Petach Tikva, signed by the hanhalah.

“Students of the yeshivah are strongly warned against acting with any form of violence against police or military police should they chalilah enter our premises to carry out arrests. Hashem has many ways to deliver us from them. Instructions have been given to those concerned.”

Had you told chareidi voters three years ago that things would come to this, amid the euphoria of the right’s election victory, they would have checked their calendars to see if it was Erev Purim rather than Erev Shavuos. But these days, chareidim have come down to earth, like everyone else in Eretz Yisrael. The warning signs popping up in yeshivahs reflect the prevailing mood.

Talking to yeshivah bochurim, litvish or chassidish, Ashkenazi or Sephardi, one senses a growing radicalization and a lack of confidence in the political leadership that’s gotten us here, moments before military police knock on their doors.

“It’s a little like smelling a fuel leak,” one rosh yeshivah, who’s avoided hanging up signs for now, told me.

After a long record of promising the skies and failing to deliver, chareidi political representatives are seen by their constituents rather like Netanyahu sees Ronen Bar.

“I won’t advise the bochurim how to act if military police raid the beis medrash,” explained one rosh yeshivah, “because Chazal said of just such situations, k’sheim she’mitzvah al adam lomar davar hanishma, kach mitzvah al adam shelo lomar davar she’eino nishma [just as it’s a mitzvah to say something that will be heeded, so also it is a mitzvah not to say something that won’t be heeded].

“Maran Harav Shach always instructed us to avoid violence of any kind. ‘Ohn alimus [without violence — Yiddish and Hebrew],’ he would cry, in the belief that violence corrupts the soul,” the rosh yeshivah continued. “But to my great distress, I fear that these warnings are falling on deaf ears. The bochurim are weary of promises that their status will be regulated and they’ll be free to sit and learn Torah. In reality, they’re receiving arrests warrants one after another, and not all of them have strong backing at home. After our politicians promised them the moon, they don’t believe anyone. I really hope this doesn’t happen, as it will cause great damage to the chareidi public.”

In some yeshivos, the mashgichim are delivering secret vaadim to give chizuk, in the spirit of the days of the Maccabees, but there are still no clear directives from the Vaad Hayeshivos or any other official body. As throughout the entire process, the responses to the orders as well as the proposals for a draft law are coming in retrospect, after the horses have fled the stables.

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The mood in the yeshivah world regarding the chareidi representatives was summed up by the Rishon L’Tzion, Rav Yitzchak Yosef, in his weekly shiur.

“Had we gone with the other side, things would be much better,” he said. “It’s unclear what they see in the alliance with Netanyahu. For the first 77 years of the state’s existence, no one could have imagined arrest warrants being issued against bnei Torah…. Yamin, yamin, yamin [the right] — meshuga’im [crazy]. We must pray to HaKadosh Baruch Hu that all of Am Yisrael is chozer b’teshuvah, so they allow the Torah learners to learn in pace and security.”

What irks worried bochurim and their parents more than anything is their representatives’ dizzying list of achievements — when it comes to securing government positions for cronies and party operatives.

In 2015, after the fall of the first government that included Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, the two brothers of Israeli politics, the chareidim demanded an amended draft law as soon as the new government was formed. MK Moshe Gafni explained to me at the time that a government can only hope to pass a draft law exempting chareidim during the first year of the term, preferably during the first six months.

Fast-forward a decade or so, and Gafni’s insight only raises more questions. What’s different this time, and why the automatic agreement to delay and delay at Justice Minister Levin’s every whim? Don’t expect any answers, because they’ll come even later than the findings of the future commission of inquiry regarding October 7.

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The videos Netanyahu has been releasing with his spokesperson Topaz Luk —his only top media advisor not to come under suspicion in Qatargate — show that Bibi is already in campaign mode. His goal is to survive the summer session and call elections next winter, on the assumption that passing a painful austerity budget in the last year of his term won’t be possible anyway.

For now, Netanyahu is managing quite well. True, chareidi MKs are holding up legislation, but as far as Netanyahu is concerned, the Knesset’s only purpose at this stage is to allow him to remain in power for the rest of the year.

Under these circumstances, does anyone think it’s in Netanyahu’s interest to pass a draft law that would play right into the hands of Bennett and Lieberman, who are competing with him for the right-wing vote?

Some in the Likud think that as usual, Netanyahu is hiding behind scapegoats — as seen in his statement this week that the entry of aid to Gaza was done on the “IDF’s recommendation.” In their view, it’s Bibi who isn’t interested in passing the law, and he’s hiding behind every available excuse — the chief of staff’s position, Yuli Edelstein’s intransigence, the attorney general’s instructions, and so on, shifting the blame and stringing the chareidim — and his tenure — along, for as long as possible.

The counterargument of the chareidi representatives, the last of the faithful, is that Netanyahu is reading the polls and fully understands that he won’t win the next election, so it’s actually entirely in his interest to advance a bill that would allow him to prolong his term for a few more months.

So is all hope really lost? I met deputy minister Uri Maklev of Degel HaTorah this week in the Knesset corridors, and related the voices of despair I’d heard from yeshivah bochurim and roshei yeshivah.

“You can never give up,” he counseled. “In our conversations with Prime Minister Netanyahu and Yuli Edelstein, chair of the Constitution Committee, we’ve actually seen progress.

“I’m aware of the desperation, and it’s precisely due to our awareness of what could happen that we aren’t giving up and are doing everything in our power to pass legislation that would regulate the status of Torah learners, even at a time when everyone else has lost faith.”

For the first time since the founding of the state, the yeshivah world approaches Shavuos under real threat of being removed from the heichal by force. Who would ever have imagined that the concept of har k’gigis [the Chazal about Hashem holding the mountain over Am Yisrael to make them accept the Torah] would take on such a meaning?

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1063)