One people cannot survive under two laws: What pushed Israel's deputy FM to resign - opinion

We began the morning at home with prayers, fasting, and mourning. Then we drove together to Jerusalem.

I thought of the old hassidic story in which the Baal Shem Tov (the founder of hassidic Judaism) recognized that a child’s unguarded prayer could reach heaven more directly than the polished words of adults. Walking beside Yael, I understood why.

Surrounded by the physical evidence of our people’s loss, I felt the sorrow of the destruction more deeply than I had expected.

Together, we prayed for two things: unity among the people of Israel and love between us.

Those prayers have rarely felt more urgent.

Israel is fighting a brutal external war against enemies who openly seek our destruction. At the same time, we are being torn apart internally – between religious and secular, Right and Left, and between the different communities and tribes that make up Israeli society.

The tension in our streets has reached frightening levels. We hear the curses. We see the violence. We feel the contempt with which Israelis increasingly speak about other Israelis.

And then we ascend the mountain.

We stand at the place that reminds us what happens when political camps become tribes, tribes begin treating one another as enemies, and Jews forget that they are part of one people.

It does not mean that Jews must never disagree. It does not mean that leaders must remain silent in the face of injustice. It does not mean surrendering our principles whenever confrontation becomes uncomfortable.

Baseless hatred is hatred without moral purpose. Disagreement is not hatred. Accountability is not hatred. Opposing injustice is not hatred. Fighting a law that privileges one community at the expense of another is not hatred.

The opposite of baseless hatred is not baseless surrender.

Real unity does not require uniformity. Peace among Jews does not mean forcing every Israeli to observe the same traditions, pray in the same manner, or live according to someone else’s interpretation of Judaism.

Peace means allowing people to worship, pray, and love the Jewish tradition as they understand it. It means refusing to coerce, humiliate, or abuse those who live differently. It means never believing that our own tribe is more Jewish, more worthy, or more entitled than another.

But peace also requires responsibility.

It requires us to see the suffering of Israelis outside our own communities. It requires secular Israelis to understand the fears and values of the religious world. It requires religious Israelis to recognize the extraordinary sacrifices being made by secular, traditional, and religious families whose children continue to defend this country.

Above all, it requires us to reject the idea that Israeli citizenship can be divided between those who are required to carry the country and those whom politicians excuse from carrying it.

That principle brought me to one of the most difficult decisions of my political career.

The final weeks of my service in the government were among the worst I experienced in more than a decade in the Knesset. I resigned after legislation was advanced to halt arrests and enforcement proceedings against eligible yeshiva students who had failed to report for military service.

I did not resign because I hate the haredi community. I do not.

But Torah must never be turned into a political weapon against the soldiers defending the Jewish state. Torah study and the defense of Jewish life should strengthen one another. They must not be manipulated into opposing camps.

I resigned because the legislation created an equation that a sovereign nation cannot endure: one law for the families whose children are sent repeatedly to the front, and another for those whose political representatives have enough coalition power to protect them from the same obligation.

That is not merely legislative irresponsibility. It is a betrayal of solidarity.

For almost three years, hundreds of thousands of Israelis and their families have paid an enormous price. They have served on the front lines. They have left behind spouses, children, careers, businesses, and universities. They have returned home wounded in body or spirit.

Some did not return at all.

Their families have carried the emotional, physical, familial, and economic burden of defending this country. Reservists have served hundreds of days. Parents have watched their children leave again and again, never knowing whether they would come home.

Then their parliament looked them in the eyes and told them that sacrifice is compulsory for their children but negotiable for someone else’s.

That broke me more than anything else.

A state cannot ask one mother to send her child repeatedly into battle while promising another mother that her child will be protected from even answering an enlistment order. A nation cannot praise its soldiers at memorial ceremonies and then abandon them when political survival is placed on the table.

And a people cannot speak honestly about unity while legislating inequality.

Precisely because I love the haredi community, I refuse to accept a political arrangement that will deepen resentment against it. Precisely because I believe in Jewish unity, I cannot support legislation that separates Israelis into legally privileged and legally obligated tribes.

Love of the Jewish people sometimes requires us to confront one another.

It requires us to say that no community is above the law. It requires us to demand a shared covenant of service – military service where necessary and meaningful national service where appropriate – in which every community participates in sustaining the country we share.

The arrangements may differ. The obligation cannot disappear.

On Tisha B’Av, I fasted and taught my daughter that the Jewish people cannot be defeated when we remain united. But I also taught her that unity must be built upon justice, responsibility, mutual respect, and love.

We may be angry with another tribe. We may fight its political representatives. We may oppose its demands with every democratic instrument available to us. But we must never stop recognizing the people within that community as our brothers and sisters.

I pray that those on the other side of this debate will extend the same empathy toward the soldiers, reservists, bereaved families, and exhausted parents who feel abandoned by their government.

Sharing the burden is not an attack on Judaism. It is the price – and the privilege – of Jewish sovereignty.

I will continue fighting for that principle. I will continue praying for peace among us. And I will continue teaching my children that love does not mean remaining silent when something is wrong.

The Temple was destroyed when the tribes of Israel forgot that they were one people.