Housing Minister Yitzchak Goldknopf caused a political uproar Sunday evening after a video emerged of the Haredi leader dancing to an anti-Zionist, anti-enlistment song at his nephew’s wedding, drawing calls for his ouster by both coalition and opposition politicians, though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quick to praise his key ally for disavowing the ditty.

In a widely distributed clip, Goldknopf, the leader of the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism (UTJ) coalition party, could be seen in the middle of a circle of young Haredi men singing that they “don’t believe in the government of infidels” and “won’t show up at their [army] recruitment offices.” The lyrics also included: “We will die and not enlist.”

The song, a version of a famous anthem of the staunchly anti-Zionist Neturei Karta Haredi sect, has recently become a hit in mainstream ultra-Orthodox circles and has been the center of several controversies.

The background is a High Court of Justice ruling last year that there is no legal basis for the decades-long blanket exemption from military service for Haredi yeshiva students, as well as a decision by Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara that there can be no daycare subsidies for the children of ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students who refuse to obey military draft orders.

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid reacted furiously to Sunday’s clip, noting the heavy price paid by soldiers on October 7, 2023, and since. “A minister who jumps up [to dance] against the State of Israel should have been fired this evening,” he declared.

But Netanyahu was not doing so because “he is the prime minister of evasion and refusal,” Lapid asserted.

“This is not the ‘Deep State’ — it is subversion from within the government that is harming the State of Israel,” said National Unity party chairman Benny Gantz, echoing a recent Netanyahu campaign against the so-called “deep state” of bureaucrats thwarting government decisions.

Gantz argued that the only appropriate........

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