editorials
Budgeting for Haredi Isolation
O n the eve of last week’s celebration of the Shavuot
holiday — a festival that celebrates God’s gift of the
Torah to His chosen people — Israel’s haredi community
rejoiced in a different celebration of a different gift:
adoption by the Knesset of a new government budget
that includes massive discretionary earmarks for the ultra-
Orthodox community that were demanded by haredi
political leaders in order to continue support of Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government.

The numbers are staggering. Budgets for 2023
and 2024 include at least NIS 5.9 billion ($1.9 billion)
in discretionary earmarks for Israel’s ultra-Orthodox
community that include grants to yeshiva students
and married haredi men who choose to pursue the
full-time study of religious texts rather than enter the
workforce, funding for unregulated religious schools
that don’t teach core curriculum subjects, and increased
support for a food stamp program that is not tied
to working or seeking gainful employment. These
new allocations are in addition to a complex web of
stipends, subsidies, tax abatements and direct payment
programs made available to haredi families, receipt of
which is often canceled if the head of the household
goes to work.

These extraordinary government supports
create a significant strain on Israel’s economy. And
they are resented by other Israelis who are being
called upon to shoulder the rising cost of supporting
a growing haredi population that wants no part of
modern Israel.

According to a recent report from the Kohelet Policy
Forum, the benefits made available by the Israeli
government to haredi families result in haredi families
receiving four times the total financial benefit given to
non-haredi families. In addition to the disconcerting
imbalance of that treatment, the subsidies create
a significant disincentive for haredi men to join the
workforce. Added to that is the fact that haredi schools, which
will also receive increased funding, provide little or no
secular education for male students — making it difficult
for haredi students to achieve high school matriculation,
pursue university study or enter the workforce. And,
haredi students are exempt from Israel’s military draft,
which shuts off another channel for possible haredi
integration into broader Israeli society.

All of this is happening as haredi families
are growing at a much faster rate than the rest of
Israel’s population. Haredim were 3% of Israel’s
Jewish population in 1948. Today, they account for
13% of Israel’s population and an eye-popping 25%
of newborns.

Haredi leaders in Israel need to face the reality
that the system of ever-increasing government
supports for a segment of the population that is
growing exponentially, seeks to separate from the
remainder of society, refuses to engage in active
support of the very government that sustains it and
refuses to help grow the economy on which its support
is based is destined to fall apart once the haredi
parties’ stranglehold on the future of the governing
coalition disappears.

Haredi leaders have artfully worked the system for
years. But the massive government supports they have
orchestrated are not sustainable. Haredi parties need
a Plan B. ■
S yrian leader Bashar al-Assad is a bad man. He was
shunned by the Arab League and most of the world
for the past 12 years, as he turned his country’s 2011 Arab
Spring uprising into one of the region’s most brutal civil
wars. His government is accused of widespread torture,
the use of chemical weapons against its own people
and a bloody campaign of oppression — including the
targeting of hospitals, schools and other protected sites
— that has left hundreds of thousands of people dead
and forced the displacement of half of the country’s
population. Syria’s Arab League neighbors have long been
concerned about the strategic and military assistance
alliance Assad developed with regional rival Iran,
and with the significant regional burdens of waves of
refugees who have fled the brutal regime as well as a
steady flow of illegal drug production and traffic from
Syria. Nonetheless, Assad was warmly welcomed back
without any preconditions to last month’s Arab League
Summit hosted by Saudi Arabia in Jeddah.

The Arab League’s embrace of Assad and efforts to
reestablish ties with Syria is at odds with existing U.S. and
European allies’ policy of isolation and sanctions against
Assad. And yet, reports indicate that notwithstand-
ing U.S. refusal to reduce its own sanctions program,
the Biden administration supported the overall goals
to reengage with the Assad regime and encouraged
10 JUNE 1, 2023 | JEWISH EXPONENT
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad
Arab League countries to get something in return for
reengagement. But what they got may be quite different
from what the Biden administration expected.

Assad’s ability to survive more than a decade of
political banishment has been enabled by, among other
things, support from Russia and an expansion of Iranian
military power on NATO’s borders. Assad’s alliance with
Russia and Iran is of significant concern to the U.S., but
doesn’t appear to trouble Arab leadership in their current
rapprochement efforts. In fact, it appears to be just the
opposite. The new wave of Arab diplomacy is being led by Saudi
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He is actively
pursuing regional rapprochement and seeking to take
on an international diplomatic role. First, with help from
China, MBS orchestrated the restoration of Saudi Arabia’s
diplomatic ties with Iran and ended the kingdom’s
yearslong war against Iran-backed rebels in Yemen.

Then he led the push for Syria and Assad to return to the
Arab League, along with an implicit nod to Syria’s friends
in Russia and Iran. And finally, MBS arranged a visit at the
Arab League meeting by Ukrainian President Volodymyr
Zelensky, with MBS expressing support for “whatever
helps in reducing the crisis between Russia and Ukraine,”
and offering “to exert efforts for mediation.”
The moving parts of these diplomatic developments
are dizzying. And the potential ramifications of the efforts
are significant. But the moves do not directly involve the
U.S. and its European allies. As a result, the United States
is watching the rollout of what could be a significant polit-
ical realignment in the Middle East along with the rest of
the world.

We don’t doubt that the U.S. will get involved at some
level. We wait to see what comes next. ■
leader.ir / Mehr News Agency / Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Arab Reengagement with Bashar al-Assad