"This is a government which has declared to the world at large, as well as to the Jewish people, that it harbors hatred towards chareidim. Suppressing and subjugating them is their ultimate goal. Their hatred has taken over their minds." With these very words, expressed by MK Rabbi Meir Porush on Monday in the Knesset, he presented his no-confidence bill in the name of the United Torah Jewry and Shas parties in light of the cruel decrees schemed by the Treasury Minister Yair Lapid, and the harsh clauses written into the coalition agreement aimed at smothering the chareidi public.
At the end of the stormy session, the bill was removed from the Knesset agenda together with five other no-confidence bills presented by different parties in the Opposition, with a majority of 62 votes against only 46 Opposition votes pro.
Rabbi Porush noted in his address, "Within this government, there are 31 MKs who banish chareidim but I believe that Hashem is testing us, and even if we have to experience difficult days and hours ahead, He will surely help us." He also pointed out that most of the top members of the government are inexperienced. "They are people lacking all association to public activity, not in the recent or the distant past."
He went on to directly criticize Treasury Minister Lapid, stressing that there are people in the government whose "heads are concerned with their public image in the media and the Internet. They live this and are completely absorbed with it. The Treasury Minister plans to impose very harsh decrees upon Jewry and found it proper to inform this to the people on the Holy Day. He ordered the employees in the Treasury to take care of `Ricky Cohen,' and within several hours, all of Israel knew that this Minister was totally inexperienced."
`Ricky Cohen' is a worker earning NIS 20,000 a month (about $5,500) whom Treasury Minister Lapid said that his policies are aimed at helping. Lapid was widely criticized for setting himself up as the champion of the upper-middle-classes, implying that he did not care about the weaker elements.
