Yesh Atid is worse than the Hellenists in the Hanukkah story because while they pursued the Jewish loyalists spiritually and not physically, Yesh Atid and its allies want to harm both ways, Shas MK Nisim Ze'ev said Thursday.
Ze'ev said he feels he must defend the Torah world from those who want to harm it, much like the Maccabees did more than 2000 years ago. He said the coalition continues taking steps in the Knesset Finance Committee that harm institutions of Torah learning and all kinds of non-profit organizations that help people in need.
"I am constantly fighting wicked edicts," Ze'ev said. "They keep pursuing and torturing the kollels and the yeshivas with such cruelty just like the Hellenists."
Ze'ev defended the Hellenists in the Hanukkah story, saying that they just wanted to enlighten the Jewish people to their culture. He said secularists in the coalition are not only trying to impose their culture spiritually but also pursuing kollel students physically by fining the heads of their institutions for lack of proper attendance.
For instance, he cited a national-religious kollel in Itamar, which he said was fined NIS 300,000 when less than 85 percent of its students were there when inspectors came. He said the inspectors refused to take into account that there students doing reserve duty and others who had permission from a doctor to stay at home in bed.
Ze'ev said that when Torah institutions fail an attendance check, they are fined retroactively for two years, even if they passed a similar check from two months earlier.
Bayit Yehudi MK Shuli Muallem, who is part of the coalition, also attacked Yesh Atid this week. Arutz Sheva revealed that in a parlor meeting in Samaria, she said Bayit Yehudi's partnership with Yesh Atid was problematic and even mistaken.
Muallem complained that although at Bayit Yehudi's insistence NIS 65 million has been allocated to yeshivas, Finance Minister and Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid has not transferred the money because of his reservations over how the institutions use the funding.
Yesh Atid's haredi MK, Dov Lipman, responded that his party exemplified the kind of unity that traditional sources say is necessary for redemption.
"Our laws are the result of secular and religious Israelis working together to find a way to live in our homeland in harmony," Lipman said. "That significant step toward redemption is truly worth celebrating this Hanukkah."