Posted on 08/20/23
| News Source: Arutz-7
Against the background of the discussions surrounding the conscription law, National Unity leader MK Benny Gantz came to Bnei Brak to visit the house of Rabbi Meir Zvi Bergman, one of the Council of Torah Elders in the Degel Hatorah faction within the UTJ party.
The visit took place at his residence in Bnei Brak. At the beginning of the conversation, the Rabbi said that he was already the sixth generation of his family in Israel, dating back to even before the Arabs were in the country. Later, Gantz told the Rabbi that he was not seeking to compromise on the conscription law but to reach agreements.
The Rabbi responded that he could not compromise on the Torah because "we do not own the Torah that we can compromise on", as he put it. The Rabbi told him that when his father-in-law was told about a soldier who was killed, he would shed tears of heartache.
The Rabbi also pointed out that the Torah "accompanied us in all our travels without land and without weapons, and it is only the Torah that has protected us".
When Gantz mentioned the beginning of the school year, the Rabbi said that his father-in-law would not eat on the first of September and would say: "How can you eat when a million children go to school and do not know how to recite the Shema." Later in the visit, MK Benny Gantz spoke about the need for the unity of the people and reaching agreements.
Haredi sources claimed that the visit, which took place hours before the meeting of the heads of the coalition on the conscription law, was a kind of haredi signal to Netanyahu that "there is an alternative", as they put it.