War Freezes Progress on Draft Law

As the war dominates everything, the issue of the draft law remains unsolved It is not a simple matter, to put it mildly, for the law to be brought to a vote in the Knesset in the middle of a war. That should be painfully obvious. Although the prime minister is busy with the war against Iran (and against Hezbollah on another front), he is also forced to deal with politics. He simply has no alternative. On Thursday, Netanyahu asked the chareidi parties to support the state budget even if the draft law isn’t passed by the Knesset. This means that he was asking them to backtrack on their ultimatum: The chareidim had threatened to refuse to support the budget if the draft law didn’t receive first final approval. Netanyahu made this request to Aryeh Deri and Moshe Gafni by telephone, and to Meir Porush at a meeting in his office.

The draft law is essentially ready to be brought to the Knesset. Before the war began, it was agreed that the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee would vote on the bill, and then it would be brought before the full Knesset to be passed into law. At the time, there was a temporary setback due to an internal debate among the chareidim after the committee’s legal advisor, Miri Frankel-Shor, asked for some last-minute changes in the bill. Some of the chareidi politicians wanted to accommodate her requests, while others insisted on ignoring her recommendations and proceeding with the bill as it stood. There was a potential risk involved in each course of action: If they ignored the legal advisor’s requests, there would be a very good chance that the bill would be struck down immediately by the Supreme Court, given the absolute certainty that the court will receive petitions against the bill before the ink is even dry on its passage. If the legal advisor herself is not satisfied with the bill, then the judges of the Supreme Court are bound to accept her position. Therefore, the Knesset would be passing a bill that was already moribund. On the other hand, ignoring her suggestions would mean that the bill would be less draconian. Besides, as Uri Maklev pointed out, even if the court overturns the law, it could take a very long time for it to do so, and in the interim, there would be a reprieve from the current situation in which the country’s bnei yeshivos face the constant threat of arrest. For what would happen next, we would simply have to rely on Hashem’s mercy.

Maklev summed up the issue in a single astute sentence: “The current situation is the worst of all.” At the same time, he stressed that the ultimate decision about supporting the budget will be made by the gedolei hador, not by politicians. Aryeh Deri made a similar statement to the prime minister and added that the Shas party’s position would be determined after the position of Degel HaTorah becomes known. Agudas Yisroel, unlike Degel HaTorah, had already turned Netanyahu down, declaring their intention to vote against the budget as they did during its first reading.

All of this, however, was before the outbreak of war, which reshuffled the deck completely. The chareidim either agreed or deliberately requested for the committee not to vote on the law at this time. In any event, the Knesset hasn’t been meeting much during the war, although it is possible that sessions will resume at the end of the week. A session was held  Monday in an auditorium, not in the regular plenum and it is not known when the next meeting will be held. If the Knesset resumes its regular schedule of plenary sessions, then the chareidi parties will ask for the draft law to be approved by the committee and brought for a vote. Meanwhile, the prime minister has asked the chareidim to support the budget regardless of the draft law’s status. If the budget isn’t approved by the end of the March, then the law requires the government to automatically dissolve; however, it is possible that the deadline will be waived on account of the war. For now, the chareidi parties must decide whether to vote for the budget even without the passage of the draft law, in the hope that the missile fire will cease within a few days and the Knesset will resume its regular work and finally pass the long-awaited draft law.

More Outrage: Yeshiva Bochur Barred from Hearing Parshas Zachor

Meanwhile, the wave of arrests of bnei yeshivos has abated due to the war; however, the arrests continued until just before the war began on Shabbos last week. You may remember the story of Avrohom Ben-Dayan of Ofakim, the kollel yungerman who was not allowed to wear tefillin on the first day after his arrest. Last week, I quoted MK Yoav Ben-Tzur’s speech in the Knesset decrying this incident. Meanwhile, another incident has taken place, which once again illustrates the callousness of the IDF and the military prisons in particular.

A bochur named Yehuda Chayoun has been held in Prison 10, the military prison, for two weeks. He was sentenced to two weeks behind bars, and he was already in prison on the Shabbos of Parshas Tetzaveh, when Parshas Zachor was read. On that Shabbos, the prison authorities refused to permit him to hear Krias HaTorah, which made it the first time since he was ten years old that he did not hear the leining of Parshas Zachor.

Once again, this incident sparked outrage in the chareidi community. Meir Porush responded fiercely, “This is the second incident that proves that the army is not ready in any way to incarcerate bnei yeshivos, yet they continue to do so, on the direction of criminal legal guidance [i.e., due to the unrelenting pressure exerted by Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara]. There may be certain things for which the army is prepared in the best way in the world [such as fighting Iran] but it is very far from accommodating religious needs,” Porush added. “It is a disgrace for bnei yeshivos to be arrested for the crime of learning Torah in a state ruled by Jews, and it is even more outrageous for them to be forced to violate the mitzvos of the Torah. These serious incidents must be addressed immediately. Despite the war against Iran, no delay can be tolerated.”

Porush mentioned the war because it began on that same Shabbos. To the best of my knowledge, no other arrests of bnei yeshivos have occurred since that time. But that does not diminish the critical importance of passing a new draft law and putting an end to the intolerable threat hovering over all lomdei Torah in Eretz Yisroel.

Supreme Court Censures Government for Failing to Enact New Sanctions

While the country’s yeshiva bochurim are already in an impossible situation, there is continuous pressure on the government to make it even worse. The Supreme Court received petitions decrying the fact that the government has apparently failed to comply with their orders to come up with new, tougher sanctions against bnei yeshivos within 45 days. Since the ruling was issued, twice that amount of time has passed. The government met once or twice to discuss potential sanctions, but no practical decisions were made, and that was apparently enough of a justification for the court to receive petitions accusing the government of showing contempt for the court and failing to abide by its rulings. This created a constitutional crisis.

The judges’ natural reaction would have been to respond with fierce condemnation of the government; however, the war got in the way. Amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Iran, the Supreme Court knew that a fierce attack on the government would not be well received. At the same time, the judges couldn’t allow themselves to remain completely silent; after all, hatred has a way of causing people to lose their capacity for reason. On the day after the war broke out, the judges of the Supreme Court released the following statement: “The need to enforce the draft obligation among chareidim is steadily increasing, yet the state is not explaining the steps that it plans to take. The court has canceled the hearing on petitions to order the government to enforce the ruling requiring chareidim to be drafted to the IDF—a hearing that was supposed to take place today but was postponed due to the war—but the Supreme Court also rebuked the government for failing to implement civil and economic sanctions to enforce the draft. The court also stated that the working relationship between the police and the army, the two bodies charged with criminal enforcement against draft evaders, is ‘very disturbing.’”

When the Supreme Court receives petitions against the government, it is the attorney general’s job to defend the government before the judges. Do you think that she stood up for the government in this court case? Absolutely not! On the contrary, in the attorney general’s official response to the Supreme Court, her aides sided with the petitioners—namely, the Movement for Quality Government, a blatantly anti-religious organization that is guilty of nonstop persecution of the religious community. The attorney general’s office sided with the movement, claiming that the government was indeed showing contempt for the court by failing to advance a package of sanctions against bnei yeshivos. With an attorney general like this, who needs enemies—or external petitioners?

But it gets even worse. Attorney General Baharav-Miara has an underling named Gil Limon, a young man who wears a yarmulke and holds the title of deputy attorney general. Limon sent a sharply worded letter to Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs, accusing Fuchs of trying to thwart the implementation of the court’s ruling by changing the procedure for advancing new sanctions. Limon criticized Fuchs for seeking legal guidance about the possibility of imposing sanctions before he instructed the government ministries to prepare the measures. The deputy attorney general insisted that the budget department of the Treasury already has a document listing the sanctions that can be imposed on chareidim and that there was no need for further legal review. Thus, he insisted that Fuchs should have gone straight to the ministries and ordered them to implement the sanctions that have already been drawn up. He also claimed that the proposed sanctions do not need to be enshrined in new legislation, and that the government can simply pass administrative decisions to put the measures into effect. In short, Limon claimed that the government is deliberately avoiding the passage of sanctions while hoodwinking everyone, including the judges, into thinking that it is complying with the court’s ruling.

The bad news is that the attorney general officially represents the state, which means that everything that Limon wrote is officially considered the position of the government. Therefore, the government has officially gone on record with the position that it is disobeying the Supreme Court. This is not a good situation.

The Cabinet Secretary Fires Back

The story, once again, does not end there. Fuchs did not take the hail of criticism from Limon lying down; instead, he decided to respond in kind. Fuchs sent a letter to the judges in response to the petition accusing the government of violating the Supreme Court’s order and accused Limon of deceiving the judges. He began by complaining that the attorney general, who is supposed to defend the government, has been fanning the flames of controversy instead, and then he insisted that it is impossible to institute sanctions without legislation passed by the Knesset, contrary to the claims of Gil Limon and the attorney general’s office. Fuchs declared that the attorney general and her staff are mistaken in their approach and are feeding false information to the judges.

“The assertion that these measures [the sanctions formulated by the Treasury] do not require primary legislation is based on the notion that the benefits to be revoked are themselves anchored only in legal ordinances or government decisions and not in legislation,” Fuchs wrote. “The presumption was that since these benefits are anchored in normative sources that are not actual laws, they can be changed through decisions on the same level.” Fuchs argued that legal experts have claimed that it is indeed necessary to pass an actual law to revoke the benefits, and that the ministers of the government had turned to the attorney general for that purpose. “The ministers requested a legal opinion from the attorney general’s office with regard to advancing sanctions by revoking benefits that are not directly connected to the failure to enlist but that will take effect only for draft evaders. They questioned whether this is considered improper discrimination that requires actual legislation. Similarly, the ministers asked if they would be permitted to set policies canceling benefits for individuals who commit other crimes (besides draft evasion) without appearing to be violating the principle of equality, which would require primary legislation. The ministers asked the attorney general’s office to review the ideas presented in the budget department’s document and to issue a professional legal opinion, complete with explanations, clarifying which of the measures could be implemented without legislation, for the purpose of shortening the time involved and enabling the ministers to assess only the proposals that can be implemented immediately, without new legislation.”

Can you guess what sort of response the ministers received to their request? If you haven’t guessed, Fuchs provided the answer in his letter to the judges: “In response to the aforementioned request for a legal opinion, Gil Limon refused to provide that opinion. This refusal indicates once again that the attorney general’s office is not acting to help the government advance its policies lawfully. Rather, the office is advancing its own separate agenda.”

This brings us to another astounding statement in Fuchs’s letter: “Any legislation advanced against draft evaders [Fuchs’s choice of words, a term that we would not employ] is essentially a law that discriminates against chareidim, since most of the legally defined draft evaders today are chareidim. Therefore, framing these sanctions as equal enforcement steps is a theoretical statement with no basis at all.” That is, the sanctions, by definition, are discriminatory against chareidim. The reality is that only chareidim have lost day care subsidies, only yeshivos have lost government funding, and other enforcement measures have similarly targeted chareidim alone. Fuchs added that the draft law currently in the works includes significant enforcement measures that most likely could not be implemented quickly or effectively unless the law is passed. “Nevertheless,” he added, “the government is working in response to the court’s ruling and is seeking such measures. However, as noted, the attorney general’s office has refused to take part in the administrative work for that purpose, which has therefore not been completed.” Fuchs ended his letter with a piercing barb: “The attorney general’s job is to give the government legal guidance. Her office should be providing that guidance when the government and its ministers request it, rather than acting to cause the ministers’ work to fail and to create an irreparable rift between the branches of the government.”

This is a testament to the impossible conditions facing the government and the religious parties. The judges and the attorney general are enemies of the chareidim—and perhaps one can add the legal advisor of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee to that list as well.

Trump Attacks Herzog, Who Goes on the Defensive

Remember how President Trump has called on President Herzog several times to pardon Netanyahu? I am sure that you remember it. Herzog was flying from Australia to Israel when Trump made his first comment about the pardon, and the other passengers on the flight related that the Israeli president was shocked. Last week, it got worse. In an exchange with an Israeli reporter, Trump said bluntly, “President Yitzchok Herzog should give a pardon to Prime Minister Binyomin Netanyahu today…. I don’t want there to be anything on Bibi’s mind other than the war with Iran.” Trump slammed Herzog’s behavior as a “disgrace” and said Herzog had promised him five times to pardon Netanyahu and had failed to follow through. “I have been talking to Herzog about pardoning Netanyahu for a year already,” Trump added. “I told him that I won’t meet with him. He’s been holding this over Bibi’s head for a year.”

Herzog responded immediately but unconvincingly, “When we are all involved in the war effort, the president of this state is not dealing with the issue of a pardon for Prime Minister Netanyahu. President Herzog respects and very much appreciates President Trump’s enormous contribution to Israeli security and views him as the leader of the free world and a central ally of Israel. He especially values his determined stance against Iran. The president of this state has openly expressed his opinion in the past that it is proper for the relevant authorities to hold an appropriate discussion with the goal of reaching an agreement, which includes the possibility of a plea bargain, concerning the prime minister’s case.”

Several days later, after he had recovered somewhat from Trump’s withering attack, Herzog adopted a slightly different tone. This time, it was during an interview with Fox News. “Let’s set the record straight,” Herzog told the interviewer. “First of all, during the war there are no judicial proceedings at all, so this subject is off the table, and the prime minister is also completely focused on the war. Second, to explain this to your viewers, I am the head of state, but I do not have executive powers. It is similar to what you see in Europe or other countries. Yes, I have the power to pardon, but I am obliged by Israel law. Just as you have the American Constitution for the president of the United States, I am sworn to uphold Israeli law. I said that I would evaluate everything seriously, but I am obligated by the law and the process of waiting for a legal opinion of the relevant authorities before any decision. Therefore, everything is on the table, but it must be done in accordance with Israeli law. I respect President Trump very much, and I accept his words with love and appreciation, because he is the leader of the free world who is leading historic change, but when it comes to a case that is an internal Israeli affair, I am bound by the law and I am the president of the State of Israel.”

In Netanyahu Case, the Prosecutors Are Criminals

Let us agree that Herzog’s response to President Trump is hardly convincing. Rumor has it that he is terrified of Trump. But Herzog is right about one thing: At this time, Netanyahu’s trial is on hold. That doesn’t mean that the prime minister has any special privileges; all criminal trials against all defendants in the State of Israel have been frozen due to instructions from the Home Front Command. This has nothing to do with Netanyahu’s status as the Israeli premier.

I have been inclined to write about Netanyahu’s trial for a long time. Almost every day of testimony reveals new crimes and misconduct on the part of the police, with the backing of the prosecution, throughout the investigation. The police investigated certain issues without receiving advance permission from the attorney general, which is required for any investigation of a public figure. They also failed to establish many basic facts to lay the groundwork for their case; for instance, the prosecutors decided that Netanyahu received favorable coverage from the website Walla, which was considered a bribe in exchange for favors that he performed for the website’s owners, but no one ever determined whether the coverage on Walla was more favorable than on other sites, or even how to define what constitutes positive coverage. Almost every court session has imploded when the misconduct of the police and prosecution was revealed.

One of the details of the case that has put pressure on the prosecution is what they have dubbed the “guidance meeting” between Prime Minister Netanyahu and Shlomo Filber, the director-general of the Ministry of Communications at the time. This is a key element of the prosecution’s narrative. The case against Netanyahu rests largely on the contention that Netanyahu met with Filber at a certain time and ordered him to grant certain benefits to Bezeq, the company owned by Elovitch. This was supposedly Netanyahu’s incentive for Elovitch to grant him positive coverage on his website. However, it has since been revealed that, based on the tracking information from both men’s cell phones, the police were able to determine that the meeting never took place—at least not at the alleged time, shortly after Filber was assigned to the position. Under questioning, Filber denied having received such instructions from Netanyahu; however, after he signed a state witness agreement, he recanted and claimed that Netanyahu had given him those orders. It has since been revealed that his consent to become a state witness was given under unlawful and unethical pressure from the police and prosecution. Since then, Filber has not only retracted his testimony against Netanyahu but has also filed a lawsuit against the state for the torment inflicted on him during his interrogations.

After the trial revealed that Netanyahu and Filber did not meet at the alleged time, the prosecution asked to amend the indictment and to broaden the range of dates when the alleged meeting might have taken place. The judges rejected this request. The prosecution continued pushing its version of events, and Netanyahu grew irate. “There was a series of meetings that had nothing to do with Bezeq; we met to discuss the topic of the media, which interested me,” he said. “Even before I was appointed to the position of minister of communications, he [Filber] was the third or fourth candidate to be the director-general of the ministry, and I met with him about those subjects. There was no talk about regulation or Bezeq and Yes. The fictitious ‘guidance meeting’ never happened; you extracted that confession from Mr. Filber, who became a state witness, through underhanded means. The meeting that you describe never took place. You forced Mr. Filber to ‘admit’ to it with all sorts of threats and extortion. But the guidance meeting never happened. I met with him about the ministry’s affairs…. You concocted a blatant lie. You saw that the phone tracking information didn’t work to your benefit, so you decided to change the story; when a lie doesn’t fit the facts, you change the lie. Unfortunately, you are still trying to do this here and now.”

The prosecutor, Yehudit Tirosh, quoted from Filber’s personal notes, which seemed to prove that he had received instructions from Netanyahu to benefit Elovitch. Once again, Netanyahu was outraged. “Those notes were written by Filber before his meeting. It is a list of points that he wanted to raise during a meeting with me. Once again, you are lying and trying to trick the court…. This entire case is a lie. You are lying systematically. If one approach doesn’t work, you try another one. The notes on that pad were the preparation for a meeting, not a summary of the meeting. You know very well what is happening here.”

“Your version of the story has changed. This isn’t what you said under questioning,” Tirosh said.

Netanyahu snapped, “I am telling you that you are lying! You are saying that to me, so I am saying it to you. What did you do to Filber? You coerced him to do this, and that must be investigated.”

Professor Barak Doesn’t Understand How the Knesset Works

I am not a legal expert, and even if I was an expert on the law, I wouldn’t want to debate Professor Aharon Barak, the former Supreme Court justice who is considered the father of Israel’s judicial revolution. Barak introduced the doctrine that “everything is justiciable,” which has injected chaos and corruption into our lives. He was also a key player in the ruse that led to the passage of the Basic Laws. That campaign of deception was the work of Barak and Minister Meridor, together with their left-wing collaborators in the Knesset, Virshovsky and Rubinstein. Uriel Lynn of the Likud carried out the deception, as he admits candidly in his own book.

The aging Aharon Barak recently delivered a speech at the annual convention of the Israeli Association of Public Law, which was described as a rebuke. Barak spoke tersely enough for me to attempt to dissect the speech, and I discovered that the speaker, like the proverbial emperor, had no clothes. His words sounded lofty but were hollow. He spoke at length about his conception of two different aspects of democracy: the formal aspect, or the rule of the people through elections, and the substantive aspect, which he defined as an array of moral values, human rights, the separation of powers, and the rule of law. Barak claimed that the latter is under attack and complained that the principle of separation of powers has completely collapsed. But in my view, if there was a collapse, the blame lies with the Supreme Court rather than the Knesset.

Barak continued, “Our election system and our concepts of coalition discipline and coalition rule, which grant relatively great power to minority groups, have led to a government takeover of the Knesset and its legislation. Thus, for instance, the government effectively determines the composition of Knesset committees. If a committee chairman or a member of the Knesset acts independently in the Knesset, the government can replace him with someone else or ensure the formation of a new committee under a Knesset member who follows its orders. The people elect the members of the Knesset, but the government controls the Knesset…. Even within the government itself, it is no longer possible for the ministers to resist the prime minister…. Today’s prime minister views himself as the leader, and he does not view the ministers as his equals. In his view, he appoints them and he has the ability to fire them…. The prime minister controls the government, which controls the Knesset, and therefore he alone effectively rules the country.”

In this case, Barak strayed into territory that I do understand. I know a bit about the Knesset and the government, and I can tell that he lacks comprehension of the subject. Barak’s complaints suggest that something is wrong with the way the Knesset and government function, but that is exactly the way it is supposed to be. Coalition discipline has always reigned supreme in the Knesset; without it, there would be no coalition and no government. The coalition gives great power to the majority, not to minority groups—that is, unless Barak does not view a collection of smaller groups as adding up to a majority. There has never been a government in Israel that did not dominate the coalition and, by extension, the Knesset itself. Without that, the government would have fallen. Hence, there was never a government that did not determine the composition of Knesset committees and that did not replace committee chairmen who bucked coalition discipline. There has never been a government in which the prime minister didn’t exert authority over other ministers. There is, after all, a Basic Law that authorizes the prime minister to dismiss insubordinate ministers; that is how Yitzchok Rabin fired the ministers from the National Religious Party, Yitzchok Shamir fired Simon Peres and Ezer Weizmann, and Ariel Sharon set a record by firing eleven ministers during his tenure. Of course, Netanyahu has likewise used this power to dismiss government ministers, including Lapid and Bennett. Since the days of Ben-Gurion, there hasn’t been a single government in which the prime minister did not control the government, which controls the Knesset. Therefore, according to Barak, every prime minister has controlled the state. But that is simply the way democracy works. If the prime minister does not rule the country, he isn’t doing his job!

Since the media fawned over Barak and celebrated his ignorant blather, I felt that I could be permitted to raise doubts about their praise.

Who Will Atone for Mrs. Friedman’s Spilled Blood?

Let me make another comment as this column draws to a close. This might not be the most earth-shattering event taking place right now, but it has occupied my attention for a long time.

Almost two months ago—on Rosh Chodesh Shevat/January 19, 2026—tragedy struck at a private day care service on Rechov Hamem Gimmel in Yerushalayim. Sixty-three babies from various apartments in the building were rushed to hospitals in Yerushalayim, and two of the babies, Aharon Katz and Tzipporah Goloventzitz, passed away. The operator of the day care program those babies attended, Mrs. Friedman, immediately found herself at the center of a storm. She was arrested, and the media unilaterally appointed itself prosecutor, judge, and jury and found her guilty of all charges. I, on the other hand, never allowed myself to be swept along with the current of accusations; I always try to find alternative explanations, especially when a person’s reputation is at stake. I did my own research into the subject, and I discovered that much of what was reported was slander. The media claimed that dozens of babies were in the day care program, but the truth is that the 63 babies taken to the hospital were taken from four different babysitting programs (for reasons that are currently unclear) and all of them were released fairly quickly, since there was nothing wrong with them. The media also published pictures of babies in closets, insinuating that Mrs. Friedman and her assistant had placed them there, but it was later revealed that the babies had been put in the closets by paramedics who had arrived at the scene. Mrs. Friedman was accused of negligence, and the media claimed that the babies suffocated due to gas emissions from a heater or air conditioner. Mrs. Friedman’s blood was ruthlessly spilled; she was publicly shamed and accused of the most heinous negligence.

I spoke to neighbors on the day after the tragedy, when Mrs. Friedman was under arrest, and learned that she is a righteous woman who has always been fully dedicated to the children under her care. I also pointed out that there is a theory that one of the babies died of crib death, a tragic occurrence that is a gezeirah from Above and can happen anywhere, while the second baby probably (but not definitely) died due to a young, inexperienced paramedic performing resuscitation incorrectly. Two days after the tragedy, the investigators changed their tune when one of the bereaved mothers, Chani Katz, showed up in court to ask for the day care owner to be released. Mrs. Katz told the judges that Mrs. Friedman was the victim of an injustice, and that her son would rest in peace only when justice was restored. The parents of all the children in the program, without exception, released an open letter to the public defending Mrs. Friedman, and all of them asserted that they would continue placing their children in her care. She was subsequently released to house arrest, and I can reveal that I visited her and her husband (a known figure in Romeima who is hailed as a tzaddik) to offer them encouragement and support. I showed them my own writings on the subject, along with a transcript from a Knesset session in which a minister in the government asserted that the rumors and accusations smack of antisemitism.

The reason I mention this now is that it was recently reported with certainty that the babies in the day care center did not suffer from poisoning of any kind. Dr. Saar Chashaviah, the director of emergency pediatric medicine at Hadassah Hospital, announced that none of the children were found to be suffering from significant symptoms, and after a series of tests, they did not come up with any finding that could indicate a cause of death. There was certainly no sign of toxic substances affecting the children. A similar statement came from Fire Department Commander Shmulik Friedman, who oversaw the event itself and the later investigations, in collaboration with the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Home Front Command.

We are not neviim, and we have no way of knowing what really happened that day to cause two babies to die. Nevertheless, there is incontrovertible evidence that there was no negligence or crime involved. Now that we know that there was no negligence and no poisoning, it is even more critical to preserve the good name of the long-suffering day care owner.

On the day after the tragedy, when everyone was still lambasting the day care owner, Rav Shraga Noach Shteinman, rosh yeshiva of Orchos Torah, was asked for advice on what to tell the mothers. When he was told about the uproar in the media and on the internet against Mrs. Friedman, he replied, “No one knows exactly what happened there, but it seems that the day care was managed exactly as anyone else would manage their own home. This was a gezeirah from Shomayim, just like a car accident. If a decree was passed, then it was passed against a specific person but its purpose was to awaken all of us.” Regarding the media, he said, “They always try to incite against the chareidi community. There was no specific negligence here. It was a decree from Above. Had it occurred in a secular day care, no one would have stirred such drama over it.”

This is how Rav Shteinman responded on the day after the tragedy, while confusion still reigned everywhere. As Chazal tell us, a wise man is superior to a novi; his comments were prescient.

But that still does not answer the painful question of who will make amends for the fact that Mrs. Friedman’s blood has been spilled.