In a surprising development, Israel’s Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara informed the Israeli High Court of Justice on Wednesday that it should cancel the interim order freezing nearly NIS 1 billion earmarked for chareidi educational institutions.
In a letter submitted to the court, the attorney general wrote that “the interim order freezing the transfer of additional funds to chareidi education should be canceled,” explaining that the issue can be examined within the framework of earlier petitions that are still pending before the court.
The move comes a week after the High Court temporarily accepted a petition opposing the transfer of the funds. At that time, Justice Yael Wilner issued an interim injunction halting the disbursement, effectively freezing state funding for chareidi education.
In her decision, Wilner wrote: “After reviewing the request for an interim order, the responses, and the petitioners’ reply, an interim order is hereby issued according to which no financial transfers shall be carried out pursuant to the decisions of the Finance Committee that are the subject of the petition, until a further decision is made.”
Despite the freeze, the opposition party Yesh Atid said it intends to seek additional relief, including a demand that chareidi teachers return funds that were already transferred before the interim order took effect.
The court’s original decision sparked sharp reactions across the chareidi political spectrum. Knesset Finance Committee Chairman Moshe Gafni, head of Degel HaTorah, accused the judiciary of waging “war on the chareidi public and Torah institutions,” claiming the court acted with unprecedented speed to disqualify funds that had been approved according to law.
The Shas party issued a blistering statement, calling the ruling “antisemitic harassment” and accusing the court of “cruelly running over the chareidi public,” from harming young children to undermining Torah education for tens of thousands of students.
Knesset member Moshe Arbel said the ruling exemplifies a system in which “a party that lost a parliamentary vote manages, within a single day, to overturn a Knesset decision through a judicial ruling that harms teachers’ salaries,” adding that such disputes should be settled at the ballot box.
United Torah Judaism chairman Yitzhak Goldknopf warned that the decision fuels societal division and deepens public mistrust in the legal system, describing the funding freeze as a direct blow to chareidi children and an extension of what he called longstanding budgetary discrimination.
MK Meir Porush also condemned the court, saying the judiciary is “at war against anything sacred” and vowed that no legal process would prevent the transmission of Torah education from one generation to the next.
The High Court has not yet ruled on the attorney general’s request to lift the interim injunction.
{Matzav.com}
