Chairman of the Knesset’s Law and Justice Committee, MK Yaakov Asher (UTJ), slammed the incitement against yeshivah bochurim and the Chareidi sector following the media’s revelation that “17,000 yeshivah students” are entering Israel.

“Everyone is aware of the value of Taglit and Masa to Israel,” Asher said at the beginning of the Law and Justice Committee meeting on Monday morning. “During the coronavirus era, we needed to come up with special arrangements. This all passed quietly. Suddenly when it’s named Yeshivas Mir, where thousands of bochurim come from all over the world, some of whom live in Israel – the whole country is aghast.”

“They requested to bring [the yeshivah bochurim] in the same way [as the Masa and Taglit students],” Asher said. “Liberman makes headlines with another cycle of incitement. Just like a child is a child, so a yeshivah bochur who comes from abroad to learn in Israel needs to be embraced, all of them. Is their entire sin that they learn Torah and not Chinese philosophy?”

“Stop the incitement, stop the discrimination,” Asher asserted. “We won’t agree to this, it’s not appropriate. We’re amid a battle against the coronavirus. Let’s unite, worry about each child, each bochur, each immigrant, and each employee.”

Although most media outlets changed their headlines to “foreign students” rather than “yeshivah students” following Health Minister Yuli Edelstein’s clarifications, the virulently leftist Israeli paper Haaretz persisted with the hatred on Monday with the headline “Pandemic czar approves entry of 12,000 yeshiva students.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)