Likud lawmaker Katy Shitrit used a wide-ranging interview this week to defend Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's handling of the confrontation with Iran, launch a pointed attack on Israel's attorney general, and stake out her position in the party's upcoming primary race, offering a window into how government loyalists are framing the year's most contentious debates ahead of elections.
Shitrit, who chairs the Knesset's Committee for Children's Rights, spoke with host Netanel Isaac on the program "Kippot Barzel," broadcast on the religious Zionist news site Srugim. The conversation ranged from the security situation with Iran to the fight over ultra-Orthodox military conscription, and touched on her own standing within Likud as party primaries approach.
On Trump and Netanyahu
Asked about the U.S. president's posture toward Israel amid the broader confrontation with Iran, she dismissed months of speculation that Trump had grown distant from Netanyahu. She argued that recent events had proven otherwise, describing a Middle East that had again grown volatile despite earlier assumptions of American disengagement.
Sheetrit credited Netanyahu with understanding, ahead of much of the world's leadership, that Israel faces an adversary seeking not merely its destruction but a broader threat to global order. She characterized Trump as sharper than his critics allow, pointing to a recent social media post in which he described himself and Netanyahu as having jointly saved the state of Israel, which she took as evidence of a genuine alignment between the two leaders.
She also recounted a meeting with Netanyahu in November 2023, a month into the war, describing an exchange in which she asked him whether he would proceed with the ground operation in Rafah even if the American president objected. According to Sheetrit, Netanyahu answered simply that he would. She argued that no other world leader has faced the combination of pressures Netanyahu has navigated, including a corruption trial, a multi-front war, and repeated friction with the attorney general and Supreme Court.
On education and youth violence
Sheetrit, a longtime educator before entering politics, expressed concern about a generation of Israeli children who have moved from the pandemic directly into the trauma of the war, saying they now enter seventh grade lacking basic emotional resilience. She said she left the education field for politics because she concluded that lasting change required legislative action rather than advocacy from within a classroom or school administration.
She spoke with evident distress about recent incidents of youth violence, arguing that academic achievement alone cannot substitute for moral education. Without values instruction, she said, a child could finish school with top qualifications in every subject and still become capable of murder. She pointed with pride to anti-bullying legislation she authored, which established a telephone hotline for children in distress, staffed by professionals.
On reservists and higher education
Sheetrit criticized what she described as preferential treatment for population groups that do not serve in the military, while reservists struggle to find time to prepare for university entrance exams and are forced to request delayed testing dates. She said legislation she championed mandates affirmative consideration for reservists who served more than 60 days.
She accused Israel's Council for Higher Education of attempting to circumvent that law by proposing to weight admissions criteria evenly between entrance exams and matriculation grades, a formula she said was designed to benefit Arab-Israeli applicants, whom she alleged benefit from widespread cheating on matriculation exams.
On Haredi conscription
On the contentious issue of ultra-Orthodox military service, Sheetrit argued that the public debate has been distorted for political effect, describing it as a deliberate campaign to manufacture chaos. She said Haredi lawmakers vote to send other Israelis' children into reserve duty while their own children avoid conscription, calling the arrangement indefensible, though she maintained that enforcement should proceed in phases.
She called on authorities to first target Haredi men she said are not genuinely engaged in religious study, arguing that any young man in Bnei Brak or Jerusalem found to be working rather than studying should be arrested immediately and inducted into the army.
On her political future
With Likud's primary approaching, Sheetrit said she intends to continue serving, citing what she described as significant accomplishments over her four years in the Knesset and unfinished initiatives on behalf of Israeli children. She rejected any suggestion that she was motivated by holding onto her seat, describing herself as a socially oriented lawmaker raised on the philosophy of Zeev Jabotinsky's "Five Mems."
The interview closed with a brief word-association exercise. Sheetrit described Netanyahu as singular and irreplaceable, called fellow lawmaker Itamar Ben Gvir a good partner, and named Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara as the greatest source of harm over the past four years. Asked to associate with the word education, she answered "with my soul, my blood, my entire being."
She closed with a message of reconciliation ahead of the fast of Tisha B'Av, saying she believes in unity rather than uniformity, and comparing Israeli society to an orchestra in which each member plays a different instrument yet together produces a remarkable piece of music. She added that the Jewish people have no other nation and no other state.
