Israel's government is put to the test by haredi draft, Rabbi Law, Ben-Gvir - Eliav Breuer

Temperatures are rising in Israel, but things are metaphorically heating up in the Knesset, with the latest week of political controversies putting the government under considerable strain from within. With that in mind, Jerusalem Post political correspondent Eliav Breuer sat down with Tamar Uriel-Beeri and Sarah Ben-Nun on The Jerusalem Post Podcast to explain the two hot button issues that have shaken Israel's lawmakers in the last week.

The first big issue is the controversial Rabbi Law, which, if it had passed, could have seen one party and stream of Judaism gain unprecedented control over everyday Jewish life in the country.

"The Rabbi Law is a law that will basically give the political parties the power to appoint rabbis in all of Israel's cities and neighborhoods," Breuer explained. 

Currently, there is a law on the books regarding the appointing of the national chief rabbis, who head the Chief Rabbinate. However, there's no law regarding how municipal and neighborhood chief rabbis should be appointed. 

"The reason this is important is because in Israel, the rabbinate has statutory powers," Breuer noted. "It's not like in the US where you have a separation between religion and state. In Israel, the religious authorities have statutory power over marital status, burial, kashrut, and other issues. City rabbis actually have a lot of power."

Currently, municipalities themselves can appoint their own rabbis. This is important because it allows the cities to choose rabbis that reflect the religious character of the city and its residents. Tel Aviv, for instance, can select Conservative or Reform rabbis. 

This is true for neighborhoods, too. Jerusalem, for instance, has ultra-Orthodox (haredi) neighborhoods and more liberal neighborhoods, and these neighborhoods can select rabbis that reflect that. 

But the Rabbi Law threatens to upend all of this.

"This law would give the Religious Services Ministry, which is led by the haredi Shas Party, the power to appoint all of these rabbis. City rabbis and neighborhood rabbis," Breuer said.

But why does the Shas Party even want this? 

Breuer gave a few possible reasons. 

"If you ask critics, and it's a pretty convincing argument, they want to give a lot of jobs to a lot of people in Shas," he said. "These are high paying jobs, they're high status. You get to be the rabbi of a city, the rabbi of a neighborhood - it's lucrative. And according to the law, the job will be for life, so they can't be fired. That's why some people are calling it the Job Law.

"Now, Shas claims that what they're doing is they just want there to be rabbis, because de fact, there's a lot of cities - 43 cities - in Israel that don't have a rabbi, they want to improve religious service. And so they're saying that this bill is just intended to elect rabbis."

Despite Shas's claims, many critics claiming this is an example of corruption point at Shas leader MK Arye Deri, a convicted felon who has faced political scandal and jail time over corruption charges - and this is something Breuer points out as well.

"Using legislation for personal purposes is Arye Deri's forte," he said. "In fact, he tried to change Israel's quasi-constitutional law, a Basic Law, to allow himself to serve as a minister after being indicted."

Even though there is a war going on, the Rabbi Law is still very important, and Breuer explained why.

"The reason we care is because, as we know, [National Unity Party MKs Benny] Gantz and [Gadi] Eisenkot recently left the government, and t he significance of this aw is that it's an important law to Deri," he said. "The law is sort of like a test to see how strong the coalition is and how much control [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu has over members of Knesset."

As Uriel-Beeri concurred, the Netanyahu government was established by a bunch of right-wing parties that gave extreme conditions to join the coalition. "And this feels like now, all those conditions are rising to the surface and taking apart the coalition that was never meant to last," Uriel-Beeri said.

The Ben-Gvir Law

In addition to the Rabbi Law, the second big issue that made waves in the Knesset this week was the Ben-Gvir Law. While itself being an amendment to Israel's police law, it was designed to give National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir even more control over Israel. 

As Breuer explained, this law has a lot of background context to it.

"In Israeli politics, there's the Knesset, the legislature, which forms, and then the legislature itself forms the government. Ben-Gvir in December 2022 demanded that this law be passed as a precondition for him becoming national security minister responsible for the police." Breuer said.

The law's text is rather deceptive. 

"What the law says, if you read it objectively, doesn't sound so bad," Breuer said. "What the law says, basically, is that the national security minister has authority over the Israel Police in the sense of policy and practice."

The issue of policy is the crux of the issue here.

"The bottom line is that it says in law that the minister can set policy for the police. The question is, what would you define as policy?" Breuer explained. "What the minister has been saying is 'My policy is that you can't block the Ayalon, the main highway in Tel Aviv, at protests against the government.' He says, 'It's policy, and it says in the law that I can set policy. My policy is that you should use police water cannons against protesters."

This law actually made it before the High Court of Justice over the question of whether it was unconstitutional. Ben-Gvir argued that there's no problem with the law, because if anyone has a problem with the policy, they can just file an appeal against it. In other words, the policies themselves may be problematic, but the law itself isn't. 

Further issue with this law was whether it could be equated to the authority the defense minister has over the IDF - and this was a point discussed when legislating the law.

"The obvious difference between the two is that the army attacks people outside of Israel's borders, and the police is responsible for people inside Israel's borders, for Israeli citizens," Breuer said. He continued: "The level of direct authority that we give the defense minister over the army can't be compared to the level of direct involvement of the national security minister over the police, because part of what the police does is police citizens, many of whom didn't vote for him. So the police has to have more independence.

"And the concern is that the police will become tainted politically and people won't trust the police anymore."

The haredi draft bill

The last and biggest political issue this week is the haredi draft bill, which many say has the biggest chance of making the government fall apart. 

But what exactly is this bill?

"Ultra-Orthodox citizens of Israel are not required to serve in the army," Breuer said. "Tis seems to be constitutionally not okay, it's inequality. You can't just take all of the people of Tennessee and say they have to be drafted into the US Army, but the people of Ohio are exempt. That doesn't make sense."

Over the years, there have been many attempts to pass legislation to regulate the issue of haredi draft, but the High Court has struck every single one down as unconstitutional.

"The law now as it stands is that every 18 year old Israeli citizen has to serve an IDF," Breuer said. "The facts on the ground are that haredim don't serve in the IDF, and they don't even though that has been the legal status for over a year already."

Exemptions can be given to specific people, but not to haredim as a group. But while this has always been an issue in Israeli society, it has become more relevant than ever due to the ongoing war with Hamas.

"The real issue is that the IDF, unlike in the past, needs thousands and thousands of more soldiers, and the haredi men are the only large pool of manpower left that the army can use," Breuer said. "So the question is, how do you on the one hand get thousands of haredim to join the IDF while currently only about 1,000 haredim draft every year out of about 13,000."

That's less than 10% of eligible haredim each year serving in the IDF. The issue becomes finding a way to raise that to 40% or 50%, while also respecting the haredi way of life and their religious needs. 

This past week, the Knesset started to work on legislating a new law about this. These deliberations in the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee will take time, but in the meantime, the Defense Ministry needs to take action.

"The army needs soldiers now, and so far, the numbers of haredim in the draft haven't gone up," Breuer said. "There's a July draft coming up - the army usually drafts in March, July, and November for combat units. So the July draft coming up soon is a going to be a big test."

What makes this so important is that the haredi draft issue is causing the cracks in the coalition to show, since the coalition members include secular lawmakers who are not excited about haredim not going to the army. 

It remains to be seen how this political powder keg will be handled in the week to come.