By: Mordechai Halperin and Avi Moskov
After Degel HaTorah and Agudat Israel signed an agreement earlier today that would allow a joint run, the Agudat Israel faction gathered at the party house in Bnei Brak. Yitzhak Goldknopf spoke at the gathering for the first time since he was crowned head of Agudat Israel.
In an exclusive recording of the short speech that reached JDN News, the incoming chairman of the party can be heard saying: “We will bring greater achievements than before, the time is right for that after all of Israel has personally experienced the blows inflicted by the left-wing and malicious government. I thank Yankel Litzman who helped me throughout his time in the Knesset,” said Goldknopf.
During an Aguda meeting, the secretary general of the party announced the list: Goldknopf, Proush, Tessler, Eichler, Roth, and Herschler. Hanoch Seibert, secretary general of Agudat Israel, praised the new candidate, Goldknopf, saying that he is “the right man in the right place, everyone knows his actions.”
MK Israel Eichler addressed the negotiations for the first time and said that “now at the meeting of the management of Agudat Israel: for years we have been talking about the need to raise the salaries of the teachers in the OT and they have not listened to us. I’m happy that this time the issue is at the top of the agenda, and everyone agrees that the first condition for entering the coalition is to increase the budget for the OT. It is not possible to punish the children because they want to learn Torah as they have learned throughout the history of the people of Israel.”
MK Yaakov Tesler attacked Yoaz Handel during the session: “He disgraced Gadui, who ended up in disgrace as a political homeless person. After a year of decrees by the Lieberman-Lapid-Krib government, we do not need an election campaign at all. We must unite in the fight against the cost of living, with concern to the educational institutions and the teachers’ and kindergarten teachers’ salaries and demanding solutions for housing, for the day care centers and to fix any matter that harmed us.”
As I recall, after a month of negotiations between the Torah Flag and Agudat Israel, today the parties reached an agreement as we published earlier today for the first time. In the afternoon, the draft of the new agreement between the parties was revealed. The negotiations will now be about the positions within the Torah Judaism list, whether MK Moshe Gafni will preside or Yitzhak Goldknopf.
The agreement stipulates, among other things, that all members of the Knesset of Torah Judaism will undertake not to enter into any coalition led by Benjamin Netanyahu, without arranging a higher budget for the exempt and mokhshar institutions, a budget that will be similar to the budgeting of the general educational institutions in Israel. The exempt institutions will be budgeted at 55 percent of the general budget, and the Mokhashar institutions with 75 percent of the general budget.
In the agreement signed between the association’s secretary-general, Hanoch Seibert, and David Shapira, the representative of the Hagar Edelstein Shalita, the parties emphasize that “this is a solution agreed upon by all members of the Torah Judaism faction for the budgeting of the Torah Talmud, and we are sure that with God’s help it will be settled in “From the coalition”. Regarding the desire of Belza Hasidim to join the plan of the Ministry of Education, and the rejection of this in exchange for entering other educational networks that already exist today, it is written that this is about “giving effect to this commitment”.