The 2025 budget is the biggest budget in Israel's history, and where the money goes says a lot about the government's priorities, Elliot Jager said to Calev Ben-David on The Jerusalem Dispatch Podcast.
"Politicians can talk from today till tomorrow about the values of a country, but a country's budget is the most transparent and the most honest statement about its priorities and its real allocation of values," Jager said. "That's what tells you what a country stands for: the budget."
Jager noted how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was able to tout the budget's passing as a success, as it had legitimately saved his government from collapsing. He was able to do this by having removed his defense minister Yoav Gallant, who would have insisted on certain changes, and bringing back into the fold Gideon Sa'ar and Itamar Ben-Gvir along with their respective parties.
But there was another price that had to be paid.
"In order to pass the budget, the prime minister had to promise the haredi parties that when the Knesset comes back after the Passover break that he will see to it that a legislation is passed that institutionalizes and formalizes their non-service in the draft," Jager explained, noting that the Supreme Court may not be able to overturn such a legislation.
Where is the money in the 2025 budget going?
The biggest piece of the budget is going right into Israel's defense, with Jager noting it makes up 18% of the national budget, and other sizeable chunks go to paying off the national debt and for education
"The problem is that about NIS 90 billion buried under education," Jager said. "All money that's going to the [coalition member parties] and their school systems." Hundreds of millions of shekels are earmarked for haredi schools, which, as Jager notes, "don't teach math, they don't teach civics, they don't teach English, they don't teach the value of serving in the military." However, considerable funds are also set for nationalist religious Zionist schools.
"It's the biggest budget in Israeli history," Jager said. "But it's deeply weighed down by patronage to the ultra-Orthodox community and to the hyper nationalists."