As Israel's political and media debate rages over state budgets allocated to the Haredi community, Professor Yaron Zelekha, chairman of the Economic Party and Israel's former Accountant General, is offering a starkly different framing, arguing that the effort to portray Haredim as an economic burden is a spin designed to shield the country's business tycoons from scrutiny.
In an interview with Kikar HaShabbat's Yisrael Meir, Zelekha said Israel's central economic problem lies not with the Haredi community but with monopolies, exclusive importers, banks, and contractors, which he said have driven housing prices to record highs and created a 40 percent price gap between Israeli and Western European supermarkets. He said those dynamics, not Haredi employment patterns, are why 40 percent of the public lives in a permanent bank overdraft.
Asked about the broader public conversation over Haredi employment and core curriculum requirements, Zelekha said those issues are wildly exaggerated to divide the public. He acknowledged that Haredim receive budgets non-Haredi Israelis do not, but put the figure at roughly 5 to 6 billion shekels, compared to what he said is a 400 billion shekel annual cost of the broader cost of living crisis borne by the public and the government. He said it troubles him that critics of the Haredi community fixate on that 6 billion shekels while ignoring the remaining 395 billion, calling it easy to point a finger at the vulnerable while ignoring the money flowing to contractors, monopolies and banks, or lost to inefficiency.
Pressed on whether that funding contributes to continued poverty within the Haredi community, Zelekha argued the real question is whether that funding is a cause of poverty or a symptom of it. He said reducing the cost of living and housing prices would generate growth, in turn drawing more Haredi men into the workforce and eventually closing that gap, which he described as under 100,000 jobs, jobs he said simply do not currently exist in the economy. He argued that once growth resumes, the employment gap and the subsidies alike would shrink on their own, and suggested the push to frame Haredim as a burden ultimately serves to protect the same monopolies that fund political campaigns.
Asked about Haredi women in high-tech who are underpaid due to their search for religiously appropriate workplaces, Zelekha said the same lack of growth explains that exploitation, and pointed to the accounting sector, where labor shortages have eliminated wage gaps between Haredi and non-Haredi workers entirely, as a model for what growth can achieve.
Reflecting on his tenure as Accountant General under then Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu between 2003 and 2007, Zelekha rejected the comparison to that era's child allowance cuts, saying those years produced the best economic outcomes for Haredim in the country's history, including the disappearance of the employment gap between Haredi and non-Haredi women and a 40 percent narrowing of the gap among men, alongside a high-tech initiative in Modiin Illit that brought Haredi women into the workforce, which he said he personally administered.
On the political question of which bloc he would join to secure the finance portfolio, Zelekha declined to commit to either camp, saying he intends to negotiate with both sides to obtain the finance ministry and lower supermarket and housing prices, and that naming a bloc in advance would undermine his ability to negotiate effectively for the public. He was firm, however, that he would not sit in a government reliant on Arab parties, describing himself as holding a clear right wing security position that opposes ceding territory and supports full IDF security control, arguing that peace does not appear achievable in the foreseeable future and that a strong economy is necessary to fund the country's defense needs.
Asked whether he would abandon his Knesset run if pre-election polling looked unfavorable, Zelekha said he would show unwavering resolve and continue running to the end. He noted that during his time as Accountant General he sent accountants into yeshivas to investigate potential fraud, and recalled being blessed by the late Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who he said told him he had fulfilled the greatest commandment in the Torah, safeguarding the money of the Jewish people, understanding that such funds sustain Israel's security, health, education and Torah worlds alike.
He said his party's social media following has grown from roughly 14,000 followers in the previous election, which yielded a similar vote count, to nearly 400,000 today, a following he said outperforms commercial television ratings, and noted that his party now includes hundreds of activists and 50 city coordinators, with 5 percent of his supporters identifying as Haredi.
