Inside Israel Today: Behind the Scenes at the Knesset

[Music] you're listening to inside Israel today with Gil Huffman on the Land of Israel Network hello and welcome to inside Israel today here on the land of Israel Network on the land of israel comm on a nice morning here in jerusalem where we are tired because the Knesset went until very late last night debating and then voting on two very key issues for the future of the State of Israel first of all they voted on a new law that passed into law that makes Israel no longer pay money to the Palestinian Authority that it uses for stipends for convicted murderers and other terrorists and their families this bill has been a long time coming it all goes back to March of 2016 when Tyler force was murdered Taylor force was a veteran captain in the American Air Force he was on Ana commander built University here it brought him to Jerusalem Eve he had served tours in in Afghanistan was already a hero in the American army and a Palestinian terrorist around the same age as him in his 20s was looking for someone on the promenade in Tel Aviv to stab Taylor force had a beard he looked Jewish he was not he was a very proud Christian who loved Israel and the Jewish people because of his faith he came from a good Christian home his father Stuart lives in Charleston South Carolina yes that same South Carolina that was one of the first two states to pass they anti BDS law that was signed into law by there then Governor nikki Haley now the American ambassador to the United Nations and he was just there near the beach Taylor force it's very sad sad reason to die and this murder really hit home both in America and in Israel because we knew that just like other murderers the assailant who murdered Taylor force was going to receive for his family and for him a lot of money each month from the Palestinian Authority the Palestine Authority gives out 1.2 million shekels a year in monthly stipends to terrorists and their families the numbers are incredible over time there are whole families who have committed acts of terror because they realized that it pays off for them and it's absolutely abhorrent perhaps this law should have been passed many many years ago but only when this tailor forced murder happened the people wake up and say someone's got to do something about this right now and so the bill for it passed first in America in both houses of Congress what's called a tailor force act which removes aid from the United States to the Palestinian Authority in the amount that's given in stipends to terrorists and their families that is from the actual budget of the United States and so the united states can decide quite easily to not give that aid they don't want to give money to terror in israel was a lot more complicated because israel is not talking about removing aid to the Palestinian Authority the Israel does help out the Palestinians a lot it's talking about removing money from the tariffs and taxes that Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority and then gives it to the Palestinian Authority this is money that really belongs to the Palestinian Authority it's a import taxes and taxes on workers that work in Israel but our Palestinians and money that had the Palestinians had a state they would be able to collect themselves but because they don't Israel according to agreements signed in Paris that were related to the Oslo Accords Israel took upon itself to take these steps for the Palestinian Authority so it's controversial because it's not Israel's money it's rightfully the Palestinians money but Israel is taking a punitive step that hopefully would give them deterrence and persuade the Palestinian Authority it doesn't pay for them to fund terror anymore between the Americans cutting off that aid and Israel taking the same amount immediately from the Palestinian Authority they need to start thinking is this the right policy for them to be having the American administration has certainly been trying to persuade the Palestinians of that as the defense minister figure Lieberman said after the vote passed by a very wide majority last night with the support of every faction in the Knesset other than the joint arab list and the merits party lieberman said that this is part of fighting terror sometimes you have to fight terror not with weapons but by hitting the people in their pocketbook so that's what he and the Knesset voted to do to the Palestinian Authority we will see if it'll have an effect other countries are starting to come on board - just yesterday Australia said that the a that they were giving the Palestinian Authority it will still it will instead give to the Palestinian people via international kinds of funds not to the PA directly the Europeans who provide the Palestinian Authority with so much aid at the very least now after what the United States Israel and Australia did need to be checking better the transparency to make sure that their money does not go to fund terror against Israeli and Palestinian as well civilians men women and children and people that have nothing to do with the israeli-palestinian conflict like Taylor force and now along the way the legislative process kept on hitting roadblocks there kept on being attempts by the Israeli government perhaps from Netanyahu himself to put that decision of removing the money automatically from the Palestinian Authority not as an automatic decision but at the discretion of the security cabinet to say okay maybe we won't really take away the money or maybe we'll decide it I will have it at our hands to use as leverage maybe we'll give them some of the money maybe we'd wait for in a particular incident to happen and only then take it to prove a point no all those attempts were stopped by the coalition and the opposition working together and that's a pretty rare thing that happens in the Knesset you don't normally have votes that passed by a wide majority anymore it's a divisive time right now we're entering an election year or though no one knows exactly when that elections gonna be it's looking more and more like it'll be at the beginning of 2019 and not in a set date of November 2019 so it's coming up pretty soon six months away and this is the time that political parties flex their muscles and try to impress their constituents so to see the Asha Tea Party that is normally extremely critical of Netanyahu sponsoring a bill together with the Lee could is something that is definitely noteworthy and it shows that the people of Israel when it comes to Phi terror I would like to set aside political differences and unite um and now we'll see what impact that's going to have I interviewed Stewart force the father of Taylor force for The Jerusalem Post and he told me that he hopes that this will be the first step on the way to creating a more peaceful climate and that might sound naive but hopeful we always hope that steps that are against terror can lead to have a different approach we'll see the Palestinian Authority currently does not seem to be interested in taking any gesture toward coming to a negotiating table with Israel toward better cooperating with Israel they are shunning attempts by the Trump administration to restart a peace process and you know what not having a peace process I'm not sure it hurts Israel in any way all those threats that there were that if there weren't the peace processes Israel would be boycotted around the world haven't proven completely false not having a peace process clearly hurts the Palestinian people if they want to have a Palestinian state if they want to have the mass investment from around the world to build up that state it would come together with any kind of peace agreement they need to be coming to the table they need to be talking to Israel their leadership of the Palestinians is letting their people down and that's been happening for way too long so you look just like this funding of terror was going on and didn't make sense to anybody but it took this Taylor force murder to wake people up and make them finally take action maybe passing this bill in the Knesset last night and in Congress in March maybe this is what it will take to shake the Palestinian Authority up and say wait a second this money it might be helping these people that they see as having done a good thing in murdering Jews but it is hurting the Palestinian Authority in general maybe this will be the wake-up call one can only hope and pray so after the break we're gonna be talking about the other bill that was debated at length last night until the early morning hours there no 1:30 not so bad in the Knesset stay with us Media to get the whole world involved in things with the click of a button Josh hastened here Israel uncensored on the Land of Israel network at the Land of Israel calm check out my show this week we'll be speaking to a Yaakov Cohen the head of Jews news he is taking on the Israel Roadshow to bring the realities of the situation here in the State of Israel get a glimpse of life in Israel the people in Israel what makes this real tick all of that and much much more news all the latest here of Israel uncensored on the Land of Israel network at the Land of Israel calm don't miss the show [Music] and we're back here on inside Israel today on the Land of Israel network on the Land of Israel calm we were talking before the break about the bill that removed money from the Palestinian Authority that it uses to give stipends to terrorists and their families and the debate on that lasted from about 7:40 to about 942 hours of debating before they finally voted I was surprised at how long it took because it being such a consensus bill so many members of Knesset speaking it got to be a little redundant the Arab Knesset members who were against it he decided to each speak one after another about seven or eight of them saying virtually the same thing every time and this was I know upsetting a lot of journalists because they were more focused about the next bill I was coming up on the agenda of the Knesset which was the bill that would draft yeshiva students now this is a bill that's been worked on for about 70 years David ben-gurion when the state was founded Israel's first prime minister met with the cause on ish the leader of ultra Orthodox Jewry in Israel also known as rabbi Carol it's and the rabbi bagged ben-gurion he said we were trying to rebuild torah jury after the holocaust please don't make the ultra-orthodox ii shiva students go to the army and so ben-gurion agreed he said okay there's only a few hundred anyway but he made them sign something saying torez my trade which meant that they couldn't enter the workforce and as long as they were deferring their army service which they would continue to defer until the army wouldn't take them anymore and what this did is it created poverty among the ultra-orthodox a lot of whom would have gone to work if they didn't need to be avoiding the army i and over time poverty just gets worse when they don't have their parents to support them anymore their grandparents to support them anymore and so that that's spiraled to virtually out of control and as the generations have gone by and so the previous government of Israel that had yalla peed in it and the ultra-orthodox out of it they tried to draft more ultra-orthodox into the army the ultra-orthodox saw it as trying to force it on them and they resisted when Netanyahu built a new government in 2015 without European with the ultra-orthodox they rescinded virtually everything that the ultra-orthodox were not able to prevent that passed in the previous government the one thing that they did not rescind was that Torah mono toys it's called the Torrez my trade but that clause would not come back it was taken away in the previous government it's still not gonna be there no longer do the ultra-orthodox have to be poor in order to avoid army service but the rest of what's passed in this government the Supreme Court has ruled illegal they've said it's not fair that the ultra-orthodox are able to avoid army service while other people are not and so the Supreme Court sent it back to the Knesset to pass a new law and this time the Defense Minister Viktor Lieberman said you know what if the Supreme Court is saying that it's not fair then perhaps the bill shouldn't be written by politicians perhaps the bill should be written by the defense establishment by the army basically with the army saying what they need and what they want so if anyone goes against the bill they're going against the IDF and so that's what they did they they had the defense establishment right that bill and that is what came to a vote last night after one o'clock in the morning the bill would give financial penalties for quotas of yeshiva students joining the army not being met now that could be a lot worse before the ultra-orthodox they're not being thrown in jail for avoiding army service other people would be thrown in jail for avoiding army service the draft is compulsory that's going a big step toward them they're not even being hit by financial sanctions wait a second I said a couple minutes ago that they are no it's the yeshivas the Institutes of higher learning that would be fined not the draft evaders themselves so this is a in many ways a sweetheart deal for the ultra-orthodox last night they voted against it and I repeat voted for it which could be complicated yo your lip eat once every ultra-orthodox or Arab person to serve in the Army he told me yesterday in the faction of his the agitator party but he's decided to support this bill the reasons why depends on who you ask he would argue that it's a good bill similar to what the achieve sponsored in the past others could explain why that's not entirely true including the criminal sanctions some say that he has political reasons that he wants to get more support and thinking things that it would help him and to not go against this bill some would say that he's trying to trick the parties in the coalition because he's saying I'm supporting it but only if you don't change anything and there he's really daring Avigdor Lieberman telling him you can't make compromises and change anything that the ultra-orthodox are demanding as he said yesterday Lapidus said the slogan that Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party Iran on in the last election was Milazzo Mila my our word is our bond and so Lieberman has promised not to make any changes Lieberman will hold him to that Lapita that and so maybe it's it's just a trick to show that that Yeshua teed is really committed to drafting the ultra-orthodox and that Avigdor Lieberman was just trying to make this issue pass with his little damage to him as possible but he really doesn't care well see as the bill now continues to be legislated unlike the first bill that we talked about on the show well that taking money away from the Palestinian Authority bill that that passed into law that that was the final reading in the Knesset the end of the legislative process here the drafting of Sheva students bill that is the first stage of the legislative process it was a preliminary reading in the Knesset and so it has not become law yet you know it has been moved into a committee that is actually meeting right now as we speak in the Knesset to try to legislate this bill before the Knesset goes on its recess on the 18th of July during these next couple weeks between now and the 18th of July Netanyahu said yesterday he wants to pass the bill into law the head of the ultra-orthodox Yaakov Lisbon said if you pass this into law we are leaving the government a process that could lead to elections being initiated probably not right away but in October when the Knesset comes back into session elections it would be held you know January february-march at the latest those are the three months that are the most likely at this point for elections to be held now another possibility is that they could decide to go back to the Supreme Court and ask them for an extension to pass the law that would be in place of the bill that the Supreme Court ruled before was unfair and therefore illegal six months though what would happen if they delay it for six months if they can't reach an agreement now how are they going to reach an agreement later right now this is a government that is very helpful to the ultra-orthodox they're not going to get anything better so a lot of people are saying why are the ultra-orthodox protesting in the end the answer is is that there are a lot of extreme people among the ultra-orthodox some of them don't even recognize the state of israel' existing and they see any bill that would make any of the ultra-orthodox stop learning Torah and go to the army as being something would destroy their society and sometimes when you have a lot of the ultra-orthodox running together as one party as the Ashkenazi party as they do that makes them go to the lowest common denominator which are the most extreme rabbis among the Hasidic rabbis that advise the members of Knesset of the United Torah Judaism party once one goes to an extreme and says it's not allowed then they all have to come in line behind him ironically perhaps if the electoral threshold hadn't been raised so much than the ultra that ice can split from each other and have their own smaller parties and then there wouldn't have to be such compromises and perhaps one party could stay in the government one party could leave the government but that's not happening and so these next three weeks are going to be intense they could very well lead to elections being initiated they could very well lead to nothing it could be very welded we're gonna look back and say oh nothing really changed let's not forget that there were debates about the ultra and the character of Shabbat that almost led to an election that would have been held this past week on June 25th and so that has been changed they decided to reach compromises and work it out and prevent that from happening so one never knows whenever knows in Israel when the elections are going to be when there's going to be a crisis that's going to spiral out of control and that's what makes covering politics in Israel so exciting there's never a dull moment over here and last night that meant going until after one o'clock in the morning and I'm sure there'll be many days like that ahead stay tuned to WWJ post calm and to Land of Israel network on the Land of Israel calm to follow all the excitement as it happens from behind the scenes in Israeli politics thank you for being here on inside Israel today on the Land of Israel Network from here in Jerusalem have a wonderful day and we believe in the State of Israel believe in the army and we hope they won't continue to make the fake but it doesn't stop our belief you have a tremendous privilege card visible coming back with though this week on rejuvenation I speak with Tammy's over shine whose family was thrown out of their home in that setting in that terrible summer of 2005 where did they go are they still connected to Israeli society by Hashem we celebrate yo my words and my children serve in the army very proudly join me for a personal look at Gush Katif in 2005 only on rejuvenation