Following the Supreme Court’s ruling on Tuesday mandating the draft of bnei yeshivos and the halt of funding to yeshivos, a senior member of the coalition told Channel 14 that Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara’s legal basis for stripping funding from yeshivos and kollelim rests on an extremely shaky foundation.

Despite that fact, the Supreme Court judges supported the Attorney-General’s stance, which is based on a few words in a clause of the Military Service Law that implies, according to the Attorney-General, that in the absence of a law, a ben yeshivah must report to the draft center on his own initiative – and if he does not do so – “he does not fulfill the order of the legislator to fulfill his duty” and support money cannot be transferred to him.

Clause 38 of the law states: “Whoever is subject to a postponement order and is not called to report at another time for registration, for a medical examination, for security service or continued service, must report to fulfill his duty at the end of the postponement period.”

The coalition member said that this is a far-fetched interpretation by the judges. “It is clear as day that even the military authorities don’t expect people to simply come to the recruitment centers on their own initiative. If we wanted to be shrewd, we would send 63,000 people to the recruitment centers in the coming weeks to say ‘here I am.’ The IDF would send them home and they would then be entitled to support.”

He added that the leaders of the Chareidi public chose not to do so in order not to lock horns with the system as well as for logistical reasons. “It is clear that the Supreme Court [and Attorney-General], in its hatred, found a negligible clause from the threshing floor that does not hold water,” he said.

He added that the ruling “could have been worse. The Supreme Court put the brakes on the Attorney-General.”

He explained that the Court accepted the government’s position that the authority of how to to recruit bnei yeshivos belongs in the hands of the IDF, rejecting the position of the Attorney-General, who wanted to remove the IDF’s authority on the issue.

The Court wrote: “These petitions are not the appropriate framework for a discussion on the details regarding the manner of enforcing the provisions of the Law for Military Service and the scope of the recruitment of bnei yeshivos, and we are not expressing a position regarding this issue.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)