MK Porush Sounds Alarm: "Israel is Headed Toward Civil War – It’s Only a Matter of Time!"

Former Minister and MK Meir Porush, head of the Shlomi Emunim party, gave a fiery interview to Kikar Shabbat from the protest tent he set up outside the office of the Attorney General, Gali Baharav-Miara, in Jerusalem, where he announced an ongoing hunger strike.

"I'm not getting into an argument with her," MK Porush begins the interview. "The Attorney General says there is a proposal for 35% fighters from the ultra-Orthodox community, that’s her judgment. How many from those 84,000 who received summonses showed up? None. This means they want to pick a fight with the ultra-Orthodox community. The Attorney General should admit she made a mistake in her judgment."

He adds, "There is no law that automatically exempts Arabs, but the authorities don’t call them. Why isn’t she exercising her authority?"

At this point, Communication Minister Shlomo Karhi enters to visit and show support for MK Porush. Karhi says to Porush: "I came to strengthen you against the Attorney General, her whole goal is to sow division among us, certainly not to recruit any ultra-Orthodox. If we were able to reach agreements and differentiate between those for whom Torah is their profession and those who aren't, she is intentionally trying to harm Torah learners. I’m sure we will win against her."

When asked whether he agrees with Karhi, who says those who learn should be exempt and those who don’t should be drafted, Porush responds: "First of all, I wish we had more learners. But the Attorney General said 35% of ultra-Orthodox will serve as fighters, and it’s not working. She should come and say she was wrong. She’s not doing any soul-searching; it suits her that we're in conflict with Likud. She’s the one pushing everyone against us. I came here to protest what she is doing, to destroy it."

MK Porush explains to us and Minister Karhi his decision to set up the protest tent and begin his hunger strike: "On Thursday, I had a meeting in the Knesset with members of the Agudat Yisrael party, and I said, 'How can I sit here in the Knesset while yeshiva students, because they learn Torah, sit behind bars? How can this be? This is the state we have right now.'"

Karhi wants to add that the Attorney General is doing everything to bring down the right-wing government and serve the opposition. We reminded him that the one who blocked negotiations was actually Likud’s MK Yuli Edelstein: "He couldn’t handle the pressure, he wanted to be President. They promised him that for every week of delay, he would get another vote for presidency. He intentionally hindered it, he dragged his feet, and in the end, they ousted him."

Karhi bids farewell to Porush, and we return to the interview with MK Porush, asking about the fact that ultimately, there is no law, and the ultra-Orthodox representatives bear responsibility for this situation: "I’m not talking about the absence of a law, even when there is no law – if they want to avoid a civil war, they know what they have to do."

Porush adds: "I have rights in this country too, believe me, my great-grandfather came here when no one even dreamed of coming here – not Herzl and no one. They came here to learn Torah, so we have rights in the ultra-Orthodox community. Here, a civil war is developing between ultra-Orthodox and secular Israelis, this is what is going to happen here. Do you know what kind of scenes you're going to see?"

Porush warns what will happen in the country if they continue arresting yeshiva students: "You’re talking here with tens of thousands of believers for whom the Torah is what gives them life. I don’t see any country capable of dealing with hundreds of thousands of citizens who believe in something, and the state tries to thwart them. The state will become disoriented, and they won’t be able to live here in this way. You can't go to war with one and a quarter million ultra-Orthodox citizens who want to live here in a certain way, it just can’t happen."

"This will develop and expand, and no one will be able to stop it. Right now, maybe something can be done, later it will be too late. You’ll send a message to everyone: Start being afraid. No one will be responsible for anything when a father’s son is taken, and they try to take him – no one can predict what could happen here. You saw that the Kalpenists knew how to disrupt when they wanted to, we too can disrupt here."

We asked MK Porush where the ultra-Orthodox politicians have been until we’ve reached this point with no regulation of the status of yeshiva students and the arrests that have begun: "I don’t want to get into where we made mistakes, we need to act together. No one asked me to delay the legislation, I can’t get into that issue now when we need to act united."

Porush refuses to address the claims that his pressure came from the Hasidic communities he represents, which previously opposed laws that could have regulated the status of yeshiva students: "We’re all Jews, all those who talk about this in the end vote G, we’re all part of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. I tell you I don’t want to get into this argument. Right now we’re in trouble."

On the chance of passing a law in the current Knesset under the new chairman of the Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee, MK Boaz Bismuth, Porush says: "He wants to, does he have the ability? Why not? If he wants to change and do good things, why not? What are we fighting for? Every day that goes by without a regulating law is a catastrophe for us. I wanted it yesterday, two years ago."

We asked Porush about the anger directed from the national religious public towards the ultra-Orthodox public. Porush wants to warn them: "I can understand, and I understand the pain, but there’s one thing I don’t understand: You know that a large part of the religious Zionism relies on the arrangements in the army, the Hesder yeshivas, do you think religious Zionism will be able to sit calmly once they finish with the ultra-Orthodox? There won’t be Hesder yeshivas. Why doesn’t religious Zionism understand what’s going to happen here? They should think carefully if it’s worth it to fight with us."

We returned to the issue of arrests and the concern that soon the IDF will launch a broader arrest campaign: "Surely if they arrest boys, this is going to develop into a fight. I don’t want to say it’s a small thing compared to what’s called a 'civil war', but there will definitely be a fierce battle here."

At the end of the interview, we asked MK Meir Porush what he demands these days, what law he will support: "Porush asks that anyone who sits and learns should receive a deferment, as was the case for 77 years. We agreed to establish a state here because Ben Gurion said to the UN, 'I am building a national home for every Jew.' There are more than a million Jews here who say they can’t live in this country if they aren’t allowed to live an ultra-Orthodox lifestyle. This is simply a fraud. They took the UN’s agreement and established a state against what they had committed."