Likud MK Chanoch Milwidsky made an emotional speech in the Knesset on Thursday, slamming the intentions of some politicians to “disintegrate the foundation of Am Yisrael” and saying that “as a Jew, I will not lend a hand to the destruction of the Olam HaTorah.”
“Our adherence to the mesorah, to the Torah, is what protected Am Yisrael throughout the years,” he said. “That’s the basis of Am Yisrael. I’m saying this as a secular person, not as a Chareidi, not as someone who has a vested interest in the Chareidim.”
He slammed Reform Rabbi and Labor MK Gilad Kariv, “who said that if a left-wing government is established, he’ll nationalize Chareidi chinuch. And we heard the head of his party, Yair Golan, saying that the Chareidim must be recruited to the regular army in order to ‘secularize’ Chareidi society.”
“And one of the main activists of the Labor party says in front of the cameras that they have a plan to ‘take care’ of the Chareidi demographic through the closure of Chareidi mosdos. That’s how they’ll decrease the Chareidi demographic. These are the people who speak in the name of ‘enlightenment,’ the people who speak in the name of ‘progress.'”
“I don’t understand the members of Yesh Atid, National Unity, and Yisrael Beiteinu—how are you going along with this? How are your knees not trembling? How are you not frightened to fight against the very thing that protected Am Yisrael all these years?”
“And it’s not that we don’t need soldiers. But no soldier will help us if we break what unites and sustains us. And what unites and sustains us is Judaism. No Western value that people invented in the last 200 years will sustain us—only Toras Yisrael and Mesoras Yisrael that were conveyed to us from the Borei Olam.”
Earlier on Thursday, Milwidsky slammed the chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Yuli Edelstein, for reneging on the agreement with the Chareidim on the draft law.
Speaking in an interview with Kol Chai Radio, Milwidsky said, “The draft presented to the Chareidim was different than the one they were promised. Yuli made significant changes [including biometric tracking of bnei yeshivos], which led to a deep crisis of trust.”
“The Chareidim are right. The whole idea of implementing biometric tracking in yeshivos is outrageous. Treating lomdei Torah and Rabbanim as if they’re lying unless proven otherwise is something I cannot accept.”
(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)
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12 Responses
Is he planning on leaving the government?
I highly doubt it
it seems that biometric tracking is the problem. Given the sad lack of trust between different groups, maybe it will be a worthy procedure. Just make sure that summary of the data set is available to the public and not just to civil servants who might misinterpret the data. Let the whole country see how many dedicated lomdei Torah we have and how many hours they spent learning.
You skipped the part dealing with love for everyone but for our Orthodox brethern. Very powerful speech.
Bless a hero. No words BH 👑
Chanoch Milwidsky claims to be chiloni. But he talks like charedi. Dos Yiddishe pintele.
This parliamentarian seems to have more emunah than some of the posters here who call for our brethren there to be shmaded in the Zionist shmad army.
בכה רבי ואמר: יש קונה עולמו בכמה שנים ויש קונה עולמו בשעה אחת
Hakatan,
Ch”v he’s a Zionist and all of them are the eirev rav
🙄
Wow. Occasionally you find a MK with his head screwed on properly
Wow! Nothing to add.
If you actually listen to what he says, he does NOT say he’s against Chareidim serving – what he is against is the fact that some supporters of drafting Chareidim see this as a tool to make Chareidim less connected to Yiddishkeit. I, too, am against this – I want Chareidim to serve, but I want every reasonable accommodation made to their lifestyle in the army, such that they leave the army with at least as strong a kesher with Torah and Yiddishkeit as they had when they went in.
Note I don’t argue that they should serve due to belief in the Zionist cause – such belief is a Hashkafic issue that is in dispute, and it is not reasonable to ask them to change their Hashkafa. I say they must serve as a matter of Halacha – since they have an obligation to help protect the lives of their fellow Jews who are in danger. YWN just had an article on a letter from the Chareidi occupant of the position of Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi supporting Israel aiding the Druze in Syria on account of the Pasuk “Lo Sa’amod al Dam Rei’echa” – and that’s fine; but that same individual, and other Chareidi leaders, should come out just as clearly in applying that Pasuk in it’s original context – where it MANDATES that one come to the aid of his fellow Jew.
an Israeli Yid
But we shall allow the majority of Israeli Jews to be harmed? It is the height of hypocrisy for Israeli Charedim to cloak themselves in piety to evade army service while sneering at secular and Religious Zionist Jews as expendable trash whose deaths are tolerable—so long as the “truly holy” are spared.