Last update - 00:00 02/01/2008
PM: If Haredi were to manage own schooling, they'd destroy it
By Shahar Ilan, Haaretz Correspondent
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Wednesday that if the Haredi MKs would be given the opportunity to run the Haredi school system, they would destroy it.
In a special hearing in the Knesset on the current education crisis, ultra-Orthodox MKs attacked the prime minister, and called for the passage of interim readings for the Haredi education budget.
Olmert said in response that "I helped the Haredi schooling in places it needed more help than everyone else together. If, God forbid, you would be running the Haredi schooling, you would ruin it, because you would damage each other."
The prime minister maintained that "only someone such as myself can give the Haredi education system what it deserves with dignity, without all the internal conflicts. So don't lecture me."
Olmert was referring to the period when he served as mayor of Jerusalem and ran the city in a joint coalition with the ultra-Orthodox.
"The children of Jerusalem always thanked me from the bottom of their heart and told me: 'What luck you aren't ultra-Orthodox.'"
MK Yakov Litzman (United Torah Judaism) said in response that "these decrees in Olmert's term are worse than in Shinui's term," referring to the secular political party.