Tel Aviv – Over a thousand students from Tel Aviv University (TAU) closed their books, left the classrooms and took to the nearby streets Thursday afternoon in protest over the kollel stipends bill.
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Dozens of students also blocked the nearby intersection of the Einstein and Haim Levanon streets, and police were forced to redirect the traffic flow in the area.
TAU Student Union chairman Ran Livne blamed Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for succumbing to political extortion, by preferring to fund kollel students to maintain his coalition rather than “invest in the future generation of doctors, engineers, and economists of Israel.”
Netanyahu has expressed the sentiment that funding kollel students is something the state has been doing for already over 30 years. Livne equated the struggle against the bill to a struggle for the national identity of Israel, which ought to encompass equality between different sectors in the population.
TAU’s president, Prof. Joseph Klafter, backed the pause in the course of study for the demonstration, and in an official letter told the students that it they who “compose the human assets, that has always been the State of Israel’s advantage, and who will bear the future economic and national burdens. The state must nurture this essential asset.”
The organizers said that Thursday’s demonstration was a prelude to the large demonstration planned for this Wednesday in Tel Aviv, to be participated in by students from all over the nation.
Last week, nearly 10,000 students held a demonstration in Jerusalem against the amendment to the State Budget, that would provide an allowance for full-time Torah students with at least three children after a High Court Ruling from June deemed the situation in which only that segment of scholars receive state assistance non-egalitarian.
Not so bad. 1000 out of how many?
While a small percetage of kollel yingermen are probably deserving of support, Its disgusting to see this money thrown away on tens of thousands of others who will contribute nothing to the economy and indeed, are likely to be functionally illiterate and lacking in job skills once they leave kollel (assuming they ever do) and try to find a parnassah. All this shows is that the chareidi rabbonim engage in the same type of political extortion as the secular MKs. So much for morality and values.
The joke will be on them when they work for haredi owned firms or firms backed by haredi investors (often from abroad).
let them get a life and contribute to society instead of being busy protesting.
let them be sent to iran and gaza.
i’m waiting for all of you who are always here to baah chareidim when they protest and now they’re hiding out there.
hello! anybody there?
There’s an adage we have on Wall St. that goes “Bulls make money, Bears make money and Pigs get slaughtered.” The question is, have the Charadi public asked for too much and push their agenda too much on the secular and non-charadi public? If that is the case, it might be time that the “Charadi bubble pop.” Should this resentment fester amongst the Israeli public, there is a large likelihood that the next govornment will not be so “Charadi friendly.” And, the frummies will get their comeuppance.
Oink, Oink, Oink!
Aren’t Tel Aviv University ,its facilities and student offerings also heavily subsidized
by the government?
Incredible isn’t it? They don’t mind funding degrees in sports, or financing athletes and sports facilities that serve no purpose at all to the tune of untold millions. Not to mention orchestras and art galleries and similar ‘cultural’ themes that cannot make ends meet from the pathetic turnout of audiences. But when it comes to financing something – anything – that is not, or rejects, their way of life, they suddenly baulk. The leaders and instigators of these protests declared today on a haredi website that it is not the paltry few million shekels (in total) a year that they object to. The financial cost is only the fig leaf to get the masses out onto the streets. Their real intention is to force haredim to change their lifestyle – all out of the deepest love and sympathy for them of course.