MK Gutlieb to Gafni: You didn't want draft law, where's respect

MK Tally Gotliv (Otzma Yehudit) delivered a pointed message to chareidi party leaders in an interview with Kikar Shabbat, singling out Degel HaTorah chairman MK Moshe Gafni over the draft law crisis and the public treatment of bnei yeshiva.

"Excuse me, it wasn't Netanyahu who promised and promised and didn't deliver; here I'm accusing, among others, for example, Gafni," she said in the interview. "Gafni, warm regards from Tally Gotliv. Let me remind you that we agreed to legislate any draft law. We did very significant work in the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. You didn't want it, but I'll remind you of more than that, Gafni and also Yinon Azulai..."

"You are not parasites"

Later in the interview, she addressed the chareidi public directly with a sharp call not to surrender to media campaigns attempting to blacken its image and portray it negatively.

"The chareidim think they can call you parasites, and incite against you, and blacken your faces, and then you'll bow your heads and come and say... where is your self-respect? Your respect as a chareidi group! You don't bow your heads, they're turning you into parasites, you're not parasites?" she said.

She emphasized that although there are various disagreements within Israeli society, the Jewish and national foundation is shared by all: "Can I argue with chareidi society? I don't have all the wisdom and neither do you. One thing is clear to me, you are Jews like me, loyal to this people and this land."

She concluded her remarks with a sharp political and strategic warning against alternative governing coalitions: "And therefore you will not bow your heads before a government that will rely on Jabarin and the Joint List who want all of us, all of us in the sea."

The comments come against the backdrop of contacts being conducted in recent days between the change bloc and the chareidi parties, primarily on the issue of regulating the status of yeshiva students. Sources in Yahadut HaTorah have added that any political cooperation will be conditional on full preservation of the status quo on all matters of religion and state.