The radio clarified that “there is a significant shortage of soldiers, estimated at about 12,000 soldiers, and the non-recruitment of the Haredim is pushing the army to try every possibility to fill its ranks.”
The ultra-Orthodox Israeli party withdrew from the government and the coalition of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in mid-July, as part of the ongoing conflict over the recruitment of Jewish yeshiva (religious school) students.
Lando accused the government of seeking “to increase the suffering in the lives of Torah students” and “repeatedly failing to fulfill its commitments to regulate the legal status of the dear yeshiva students,” indicating that his opinion is “that participation in the government and coalition must end immediately, including immediate resignation from all positions.”
In a subsequent statement, the parliamentary bloc delegation accused Netanyahu’s government of “violating its repeated commitments to care for the status of yeshiva students,” adding that “all its members have now announced their resignation from the coalition and the government.”
Soon, the “Degel HaTorah” bloc was joined by the Hasidic “Agudat Yisrael” bloc, the other partner in the “United Torah Judaism” party.
According to an American source, this role became clearly evident in a recent rescue mission in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza Strip, “where a rescue team, most of whom were women, spent hours retrieving the body of a soldier from under the rubble, revealing a shift in the tasks assigned to women.”
