Jerusalem, October 29: Thousands of Israeli university students demonstrated across the country on Wednesday to protest against government plans to pay millions of shekels in stipends to full-time religious students.
Simultaneous demonstrations took place in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, as well as in Galilee, in the northern port city of Haifa and in Beersheva in the southern Negev desert, police said.
The protests were coordinated to denounce government plans to approve living stipends for ultra-Orthodox Yeshiva students as part of the state budget for the next two years.
In Jerusalem, several hundred students armed with drums and vuvuzelas marched near the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus, setting tyres alight and blocking the roads, an AFP correspondent said.
Some carried banners reading “Excuse us for working!” in a reference to the fact that university students are not eligible for similar stipends and must combine full time studies with work to support themselves.
Ultra-Orthodox Yeshiva students have received stipends from the state for decades, but earlier in the year the supreme court ruled that including payments in the state budget discriminated against non-Yeshiva students and ordered the government to lay out the criteria for aid through appropriate legislation.
Nevertheless, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz announced plans earlier this week to include 111 million shekels in stipends in the state budget for 2011-12, which on Monday passed its first reading in the parliament.
“The problem comes when the country gives preferences to an entire community that does not contribute at all to society,” Uri Kedar, a student leader from Beersheba told Israel’s public television.
In many Orthodox families, men devote all of their time to studying the Torah and raise typically large families with the help of grants from religious schools and the National Insurance Institute.
The average wages in many Orthodox towns are well below the poverty level and Israel’s minimum wage, in part because of a widespread lack of professional education and training in those communities.
——Agencies