Former finance minister accuses Netanyahu of intentionally keeping ultra-Orthodox community poor and ignorant.
By Adina Katz, World Israel News
Yisrael Beiteinu head and former finance minister Avigdor Liberman launched a blistering attack against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying that the premier should be eternally damned for allocating funds to ultra-Orthodox schools that don’t teach the core academic curriculum.
“I agreed to give a lot of money [as finance minister] in exchange for core curriculum studies,” Liberman told Hebrew-language Channel 12 News on Saturday evening.
“What Netanyahu did, and for that he deserves to suffer in hell every day, is he took those people and said: ‘I will give you the same funds without the need to study core studies. I want you to remain in poverty, without education, and you will suffer,’” the MK continued.
“The fact that Netanyahu has prevented Israeli children from studying core studies is intolerable, unacceptable and unforgivable.
“The man is willing to sell out on all values in exchange for power,” he added.
Liberman has a long history of making comments hostile to ultra-Orthodox Jews, including saying in 2021 that the religious parties should be “carted off to the garbage dump, along with Netanyahu, in wheelbarrows.”
Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, a close ally of Netanyahu, responded by referring to Liberman by his original Russian name, Yvette, and saying he was “jealous” of the premier.
Using Gematria, a Jewish practice of assigning numerical points to words or letters, Karhi wrote on Twitter that “Yvette” has the same value as the word “Satan” in Hebrew.
Israel’s ultra-Orthodox parties are currently slated to receive the largest-ever allocation of funds from the national budget in the history of the state, of which around 1.2 billion shekels ($328 million) will be routed to schools that do not teach English, math, or non-religious subjects.
Despite the large amount of funding, the Agudat Israel faction within the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party is threatening to vote against the state budget and topple the government, should Netanyahu not transfer them an additional 600 million shekels ($164 million) in subsidies for yeshiva students.
If the state budget is not passed by May 29th, the Knesset will automatically be resolved and the Israeli public will go to an unprecedented sixth round of national elections in seven years.
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