United Torah Judaism warns it could support a state commission into the massacre unless the coalition bypasses the High Court ruling and advances subsidies for families of draft evadersLikud supported a controversial daycare subsidies bill Wednesday after United Torah Judaism threatened to back a state commission of inquiry into the Oct. 7 massacre if the coalition failed to pass the measure.United Torah Judaism officials said lawmaker Moshe Gafni told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the ultra-Orthodox party would support the inquiry if there was no majority for the bill.2 View gallery United Torah Judaism lawmaker Moshe Gafni and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Photo: Danny Shem Tov / Noam Moskowitz, Knesset)The bill passed a preliminary reading in the Knesset by a vote of 44-37.The proposal, introduced by Deputy Minister Yisrael Eichler of United Torah Judaism, seeks to bypass a High Court of Justice order halting daycare subsidies for families in which the father is considered a draft evader. Military service is compulsory for most Jewish Israelis, while many ultra-Orthodox men have long received exemptions for full-time religious study, a system that has become increasingly contentious during the war.The opposition withdrew all its own bills in an effort to embarrass the coalition, whose members rushed to the plenum to support the daycare measure. But not all coalition members backed it. The Religious Zionist Party decided not to participate in the vote, while Likud lawmaker Dan Illouz voted against it.Shas lawmaker Yinon Azoulay confronted Illouz afterward, shouting: “Shame on you!”The Religious Zionist Party said its leader Bezalel Smotrich “refused the pleas of the prime minister and his people” to support the bill.“When there is no draft law and the Haredim are unwilling to enlist, we are not part of this,” the party said. “The Haredim flirt with the left and oppose the draft law, and we are not willing to accept that. The Religious Zionist Party will not be the Haredim’s next sucker. They have finished off the draft and are still demanding the daycare law? That is absurd.”Illouz called the bill “a draft-bypass law intended to perpetuate the exemption and allow political horse-trading to keep funding the nonparticipation of tens of thousands of young men in the burden of service.”“I will not support a law that removes the only incentive a young Haredi man has to enlist,” he said.United Torah Judaism chairman Yitzhak Goldknopf attacked Smotrich over the abstention. “Smotrich’s abstention exposes his true face,” Goldknopf said. “When he comes again to scrape together votes in the Haredi sector, the public will remember that at the moment of truth, Haredi families mattered to him like last year’s snow. As far as he is concerned, Haredi children are just another tool in the political game to cross the electoral threshold.”2 View gallery Bezalel Smotrich (Photo: Gil Nechushtan)After the vote, Eichler praised the bill’s passage. “The daycare bill I proposed many long months ago enshrines the working mother’s right to a daycare discount regardless of the husband’s actions,” he said. “The Knesset’s vote in favor of the bill is an important ray of light amid the darkness of the persecution of the entire Haredi public. This is important news for thousands of families.”United Torah Judaism lawmaker Meir Porush said approval of the bill was “a significant step toward correcting the terrible injustice done to the families of Torah learners.”“It is shameful that opposition lawmakers, alongside a few from the coalition, chose to harm small children in this way,” he said.The October Council, a group representing families and activists demanding an official investigation into the failures surrounding Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, condemned the Haredi threat to use support for a state commission of inquiry as political leverage.“A state commission of inquiry will be established because it is the right and just thing to do, not as horse-trading of money over the blood of the fallen,” the group said. “We expect all 120 Knesset members to vote in favor of establishing a state commission of inquiry, nearly 1,000 days late, a delay that endangers the continued existence of the State of Israel. If we do not draw lessons and fix what needs to be fixed, the next massacre is already around the corner.”Meanwhile, a bill to dissolve the Knesset is expected to be brought for a first reading Monday after a committee debate that morning. It would then return to committee before final approval in second and third readings. No election date has been agreed upon.The coalition crisis has deepened over the failure to pass a draft exemption law for ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students.“We no longer have faith in Netanyahu,” he said after consultations at his home, following messages from Netanyahu and his aides to Haredi parties that there was currently no path to passing the draft exemption law in its present form.In a handwritten letter to lawmakers, Lando wrote: “We have no confidence in the prime minister. We no longer feel like his partners. We are not obligated to him. From now on, we will do only what we think is good for Haredi Judaism, and in our view elections are needed as soon as possible. All kinds of talk about a bloc no longer exist.”