Minister in the Education Ministry Haim Biton (Shas) is in a conflict of interest and cannot deal with the status of the closure of ultra-Orthodox (haredi) schools due to his position, the Movement for Quality Government in Israel argued in a petition on Tuesday to Education Minister Yoav Kisch and Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara.
Home Front Command directives issued by Defense Minister Israel Katz on June 13 included the closure of schools and the prohibition of large gatherings aside from essential locations and services.
The directive for the schools was a blanket one, so after suspicions arose that some haredi schools were not following protocols and were indeed open for studies, inspectors from the Education Ministry visited them. These inspections took place in several cities, including Jerusalem, Bnei Brak, Tiberias, Rehovot, Modi’in Illit, and Betar Illit.
The Education Ministry on Sunday ordered that the schools be closed, adding that funding to institutions that don’t follow the protocols will be frozen.
Kisch said at the time, “This is a national responsibility, and we are using all the tools at our disposal.”
However, a few hours later, Biton announced that he was working to prevent the closures of the violating institutions and that, either way, the funds wouldn’t be frozen.
“Any institution that agrees to follow the protocols from this point forward – this serves as the last warning,” he said. This effectively prevented the appropriate legal consequences from taking form.
Possible conflict of interest
Biton once served as the CEO of Bnei Yosef, a haredi educational network and series of schools, the MQG noted, arguing that not only does this place him in a conflict of interest, but it endangers the safety and well-being of all of the affected students.
“Sadly, it appears that [Kisch] succumbed to political pressures exerted by Biton and other ministers” by converting the fines to mere warnings, said the MQG.
It added that Biton’s behavior, in this case, is not an exception but rather a worrying pattern of the minister’s that “routinely allows for haredi institutions to ignore the law.” The NGO referenced a nearly-identical incident in April 2024, a little over a year ago, when schools were closed due to the first Iranian missile attack, and Biton told a radio station that he “spoke with the right people,” and they wouldn’t be closed.
The MQG requested that clarifications be made to the minister that he cannot come within a ten-foot pole of Bnei Yosef or other such institutions due to his conflict of interest.
It also demanded that institutions that stayed open despite the national emergency directives be shuttered and the funding pulled “in accordance with the law and with directives issued by the Education Ministry itself.”