What Israel's Budget Reveals About our Values
Last week, the Knesset passed the FY 2025 budget. Had it not passed the Netanyahu government would have fallen.
Politicians can talk hooey about what values a nation state epitomises. However, the most transparent, genuine expression of its priorities is the national budget. Israel’s budget is the unvarnished expression of how we allocate our national values.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich touted the budget passed by the Knesset overnight between Wednesday and Thursday last week as “a war budget.” And indeed, Israel is 542-plus days into its longest-ever war that began on October 7, 2023.
Opposition Leader Yair Lapid called the budget “the largest robbery in the history of the State.” The Yesh Atid Party chief said it stole money from the middle class and working people, those who pay taxes and serve in the IDF “without whom there is no state.”
That sort of talk left the non-Zionist chair of the Knesset Finance Committee, Moshe Gafni, of the Degal Hatorah faction of UTJ, flustered. He stood at the Knesset podium to declare that it was not easy to be a haredi in Israel these days. להיות אדם חרדי זה לא קל היום במדינה
Perhaps he was channeling the Yiddishist Sholom Aleichem, who wrote sardonically in 1920 Es is Shver tsu zayn a yid — but he was referring to the Czarist Empire.
Passage of the budget confirms that Binyamin Netanyahu, who has ruled on and off for about 18 years since 1996, has never been stronger politically. Barring unforeseen circumstances, he will not face the voters until February or March of 2026 — perhaps later.
Sixty-six Knesset members supported the budget, while 52 opposed it. With Likud renegade Yoav Gallent replaced by the reliable Bibist apparatchik Israel Katz, and the return to the Likud fold of the unscrupulous Gideon Sa’ar (in exchange for playing Foreign Minister) and his three MK lemmings, Michel Buskila, Ze’ev Elkin, and Sharren Haskel, Bibi had more than enough votes.
Not to mention the homecoming of our ruffian National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and his hardal Jewish Power Party with its seven Knesset seats.
Shas leader and ex-con Aryeh Deri, who is off sulking, did not participate, but he authorized the participation of other members of his Sephardi haredi party to ensure passage.
Partisan Budget
To buy the support of United Torah Judaism and Shas, Netanyahu promised that when the Knesset returns from its Passover break, legislation enshrining haredim from serving in the IDF or doing any other form of national service will be passed. There are presently some 150,000 Haredim of draft or reserve duty age who don’t serve, don’t work, and not a small number don’t even pretend to learn Torah. Bear in mind that haredim are close to 18 percent of Israel’s population.
Everyone knows that the Knesset is not likely to formalize into statute draft-dodging by the insular-leaning ultra-Orthodox. Yet it was in the interest of Netanyahu and his Haredi enablers to kick the conscription evasion can down the road.
Biggest Budget Ever
Besides making promises that he will not keep, Netanyahu paid the haredim and hardal parties of Bezalel Smotrich, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and Avi Maoz in hard cash and political patronage.
The total budget is NIS 620 billion, or is it NIS 756 billion? It depends on whether you include funds already allocated and interest payments already made. A billion here and a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about serious money, to paraphrase the late Everett Dirksen.
The gross budget is NIS 840 billion. And there are likely to be additional crisis expenditures.
Where the money goes
The military takes the biggest piece of the pie, NIS 109.8 billion or $29.9 billion, about 18 percent (compared to 13 percent for the US).
Some NIS 136 billion will go to pay off what Israel owes its creditors.
Education comes next with about NIS 90 billion, though buried under “education” is the increased patronage to the ultra-Orthodox sector to the tune of NIS 294 million, so that they can go on canceling the State’s mandatory curriculum – and not teach math, English, or civics – in their network of schools. How better than to raise a generation that thinks “democracy” is pure, unchecked, majority rule? You know, like in the UN General Assembly.
-NIS 76 million earmarked for haredi culture
-NIS 60 million to non-citizen haredi youth gap-yearing in Israel
Then there are vacuous ministries that suck up monies in return for political loyalty:
There are credible reports that to win back Avi Maoz and his Noam Party, Maoz will be elevated to minister in the Prime Minister’s Office. Just before the budget vote, Maoz, as a deputy minister, resigned from the government, complaining that the “deep state” prevented him from purging homosexuals and their amen corner. He controls a budget of at least NIS 285 million ($76 million).
Other Netanyahu-government ministeries that have no raison d'etre other than jobs for the boys (and girls) are:
The Ministry of Settlement and National Missions (National Religious Party) headed by Orit Strok.
The Ministry of Heritage (Otzma Yehudit) headed by Amichai Eliyahu
The Ministry of Jerusalem and Jewish Tradition (UTJ/Agudat Yisrael) headed by Meir Porush
The Ministry of the Diaspora and the Fight against Anti-Semitism headed by Amichai Shekeli
The Ministry of Regional Cooperation headed by (Likud’s) David Amsalem
The Ministry of Social Equality and the Advancement of the Status of Women headed by (Likud) May Golan
The Ministry of the Negev and the Galilee headed by (Otzma Yehudit) Minister Yitzhak Wasserlauf
The Ministry of Innovation, Science and Technology headed by Gila Gamliel
The Ministry of Religious Services headed by (Shas) Michael Malchieli
Cut They Must
All this bloat and waste has to be paid for. Thus, the non-Haredi education budget will be cut by NIS 124 million. Welfare will be cut by NIS 59 million. Health will be cut by NIS 53 million – which will translate into fewer positions for new doctors and fewer new medications approved in the kuput holim basket.
Pay for public sector employees will be cut by 2 percent. All other benefits to the general public that will not be cut will be frozen at current rates.
Not to fret: elected officials and teachers in the haredi school systems will not be cut.
Taxes go up
Obviously, spending will exceed revenue; the deficit will be about 5 percent. To pay for Israel’s biggest budget ever, the ubiquitous VAT (tax on virtually everything) has increased 1% (to 18 percent), and National Insurance payments have increased 1.6%. Our water bills are up 2%, electricity 3.8%, public transportation up a whopping 33%, and arnona up about 5.3% – that’s the separate municipal taxes most of us pay.
Winners & Losers
Non-Haredi Israelis will pay NIS 232 billion more than the benefits they can expect to receive from the budget. Haredi families will get 13 billion more than they pay. There is no significant money allocated for the reconstruction of the north or the south. Some war budget!
The Netanyah-Smotrich budget ravages societal cohesion and exacerbates enmity among Israel’s tribes. In the meantime, Netanyahu continues to concentrate power in his hands. The judicial putsch is officially back on. He’s coming after the media next. Since October 7, Israel has been embroiled in a seven-front war. Netanyahu has now unconscionably opened an eighth front against Israelis who politically oppose him.
So, this budget tells me that the values Netanyahu, Smotrich, Ben-Gvir, Maoz, Gafni, and Deri have allocated for Israel’s polity are perverted.