Tel-Chai Nation

Yes, seriously. This happened after a court ruling to stop special welfare stipends:

An expanded, seven-justice panel of the High Court of Justice on Sunday unanimously threw out as unconstitutional the payment of approximately NIS 1,000 per month in subsidies by the state to some 10,000 haredim who study in yeshivot and do not work.

Justice Elyakim Rubinstein wrote the court’s opinion.

The subsidies were part of a government policy to get around a 2011 court ruling invalidating the subsidies for haredim as unfair discrimination and favoritism. The new policy attempted to set an objective standard by giving the subsidies to haredim for four years to those who did not work, but who studied at least 35 hours per week, and had at least three children.

Sunday’s High Court ruling said that the revised policy still failed to pass a fairness test and still favored haredim in a discriminatory fashion. [...]

UTJ party leader Moshe Gafni condemned the “disgraceful” ruling against “Torah scholars” as fitting for this “period which we are living in” when haredim are, as he sees it, under attack.

He explicitly rejected Rubinstein’s reading of traditional Jewish sources in favor of working and against perpetual Torah study and said he hoped “we will not get to a point where the air breathed by the haredi public will be thought of” as special treatment.

Yes, do tell us about it, Gafni. He basically rejects the verses urging people to work for their living (one of which I'd noted here), and that pretty much says all we need to know about where he really stands. It's been argued that there's quite a few Haredis who aren't the experts in Torah they could be, and alas, this is possible, so that's why they can't get those welfare stipends, and they'd do well to set a better example for their families by working for their benefit.

Labels: haredi corruption, Israel, Judaism, Knesset, Moonbattery, political corruption