Weekly Commentary: Will Firing Galant Boomerang On Haredis? There's Hope
Dr. Aaron Lerner 7 November 2024

Much of the Likud street cannot stomach that able-bodied Haredi men get a
free pass on army service.

And since the Likud rank and file votes in the primaries which set the Likud
ticket, Likud MKs who want to keep their jobs can't easily consider casting
their vote in favor of a draft law to legalize this free pass.

Yes, Prime Minister Netanyahu can chew out a backbencher or two, but
opposition to the free pass has spread well beyond minor players in the
party.

So when the leaders of the opposition and the media talking heads all
claimed that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu fired Defense Minister Yoav
Galant, to pass a sham draft law it will hopefully turn out to be a huge win
for the country.

There are now two approaches:

One is to come up with a draft law which objectively ends the free pass for
Haredis.

This is a problem because the Haredi politicians won't support legislation
that actually ends the free pass.

And to make matters worse, even if by some miracle - and it would be a
miracle - the Haredi politicians actually came around and supported an end
to the free pass, the opposition, along with the media talking heads, would
easily convince the overwhelming majority of the public that this miraculous
law enacted with the support of the haredi MK was a sham.

This leaves us with the second approach: don't pass a new draft law.

The beauty of the second approach for the Likud is that it would strip the
opposition of what would have otherwise been a winning theme for their
election campaign.

Instead, during the no-doubt heated election campaign, Likud could assert
that just as the opposition misrepresented the intentions of the ruling
coalition in November 2024, so too are the opposition's election claims
fake.
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