No heretic dared to humiliate and disgrace the Torah like Moshe Gafni | Shlomo Shmuel

Shlomo Shmuel sharply attacks the leadership of United Torah Judaism, headed by Moshe Gafni, Israel Eichler, and Meir Porush, over the failure of the draft law. He accuses them of obsessive loyalty to Netanyahu and a lack of parliamentary achievements, and calls on them to step down and make way for a new generation of yeshiva scholars. Shmuel sees the upcoming elections as an opportunity for a revolutionary change in the Haredi representation.

In a sharp opinion piece in Maariv, Shlomo Shmuel attacks the leadership of the United Torah Judaism party, especially Moshe Gafni, Israel Eichler, and Meir Porush. He claims the party failed its greatest test – the draft law – and that its veteran leaders cling to their seats instead of stepping down. Shmuel accuses them of obsessive loyalty to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which he describes as 'other gods' in the language of the sources. He notes that Gafni secured generous budgets for yeshivas as chairman of the Finance Committee, but stresses that the great yeshivas thrived before the establishment of the state without government budgets. Shmuel calls for refreshing the Haredi leadership with new figures, talented yeshiva scholars from the Hasidic courts of Gur, Belz, and Vizhnitz, as well as from the Lithuanian sector. He sees the upcoming elections as potential for revolutionary change that could weaken the hatred between secular and Haredi, and warns that keeping the current leadership would be a 'disaster'.