Yisrael Eichler

Yisrael Eichler was born on March 27, 1955, and is a resident of Jerusalem.[1] He is married with 14 children.[1][9]

His father, Menashe Eichler, was a Belz Hasid who fought for Israel in its early wars, including the War of Independence and the Yom Kippur War.[5][10] Yisrael Eichler himself did not serve in the Israel Defense Forces.[10] In a 1996 interview cited in a scholarly article, Eichler explained the distinction between his father's service and his own position: his father had fought for Am Yisrael, whereas Eichler viewed the State's army as a force that had come to pull people away from their Jewish identity rather than protect it. As the article quotes him: "The army is now a force that pulls people away from being Jews; it no longer protects their being Jewish."[10] The distinction anticipated his later opposition to Haredi military conscription, which became a recurring issue in his political career.[11][12]

Before entering electoral politics, Eichler established himself as a prominent figure in Haredi media. He served as editor of HaMachaneh HaHaredi — the bulletin of the Belz Hasidic movement — and published a weekly column in it for forty years.[6] A 1996 scholarly article similarly identifies him as editor of the Belzer Hasidic newspaper ha-Machane ha-Haredi.[10]

By the late 1990s Eichler had also become a television personality: a 1997 report described him as editor of the Haredi weekly Mahaneh Haharedi and noted his participation in broadcast media.[13] He appeared as a panelist on the television program Popolitika alongside figures such as Yosef (Tommy) Lapid.[14] He also chaired the Center for Jewish Publicity.[15] In addition to his media work, he managed a furniture store and has given a daily Torah lesson at the synagogue in the Knesset building.[6]

Eichler first entered the Knesset in 2003 as a representative of Agudat Yisrael within United Torah Judaism, completing his initial period of service in 2005.[3][2] During that period he chaired the Public Petitions Committee and served as an acting member of the Finance Committee.[14] In February 2011, he returned to the Knesset to replace Meir Porush, who had resigned under a rotation agreement.[2] Eichler said returning from Haredi journalism had not been an easy decision and described his purpose as fighting what he called anti-Haredi racism and preserving Jewish culture. He also said the Belz Rebbe had instructed him to return: "It is a matter of a mission — they sent me, so I am going."[2]

He subsequently appeared sixth on the UTJ slate in the 2015 election, in which the party won six seats in the 20th Knesset.[16] He was again listed sixth on the UTJ list ahead of the 2021 Knesset election.[17] Throughout this period he served almost continuously as the Belz Rebbe's representative on the Agudat Yisrael list within UTJ.[7]

In later terms, Eichler chaired the Knesset Labor and Welfare Committee and served as Deputy Speaker of the Knesset.[3][18] The Jewish Review of Books noted in a 2020 discussion of Haredi participation in Israeli public life that Eichler had worked to strengthen Knesset governance, citing this as an example of Haredi leaders taking on broader public responsibilities.[19]

His work on the Labor and Welfare Committee was noted for cross-party cooperation. A Ynet account described his collaboration with MK Hili Trooper on legislation concerning wounded IDF veterans, with Trooper recalling that Eichler cleared the committee's schedule for the issue and that deliberations continued for days and nights.[20] During a heated discussion about provisions covering combat-stress victims, Eichler reportedly asked Trooper to address the veterans "as a fighter speaking to fighters" and expressed his desire for the bill to pass unanimously.[20]

Eichler served as Minister for Housing and Construction in Israel's 37th government.[4] In July 2025, following the resignation of former Housing Minister Yitzchak Goldknopf amid a dispute over the military conscription of yeshiva students, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu moved to appoint Eichler to the position.[21] Reports at the time noted that the appointment was contingent on a Knesset vote and that Eichler would return to his committee chairmanship if Goldknopf resumed office.[21]

In July 2025, Eichler was also elected to one of the Knesset seats on the Rabbinical Judicial Appointments Committee — the body that selects and appoints judges for Israel's rabbinical courts — receiving 66 votes in favor and 38 against after running unopposed following the withdrawal of other candidates.[22] He stated after the vote that he would work to select judges who would administer justice according to Torah and the fear of God.[22]

In January 2026, Eichler was appointed Deputy Minister of Communications and resigned his Knesset seat as part of an arrangement designed to allow Yitzhak Pindrus of UTJ's Degel HaTorah faction to return to the Knesset and vote for the government's draft bill concerning yeshiva students.[23] Eichler's own Agudat Yisrael faction opposed the bill, and the arrangement effectively neutralized his opposition vote while adding one in favor of the measure.[23] Opposition politicians criticized the appointment as a political quid pro quo.[23] He was still serving as Deputy Minister of Communications as of October 2026.[3]

The question of Haredi military exemptions has been a defining issue in Eichler's political career. In May 2023, as head of the Knesset Labor and Social Welfare Committee, he warned that the Agudat Yisrael faction might bring down the government and trigger early elections if its demand for an additional NIS 600 million in the state budget was not met.[11] He explained that the faction had agreed to defer its demand for a law formally exempting Haredi men from military service until an override clause was enacted as part of the government's judicial overhaul, and said the faction would need to reconsider its position if there were no judicial reform, no draft exemption law, and no additional budget allocation.[11]

At a UTJ conference in Jerusalem in October 2023, Eichler said the Haredi sector had "no rights at all" and that its members faced only taxes and societal obligations.[24] He also criticized housing construction for Haredim in Jerusalem, Ashdod, and Beit Shemesh.[24] The remarks drew public criticism, in part because Haredi parties had recently secured significant budget allocations while simultaneously seeking legislation to exempt Haredi men from military service.[24]

On the historical dimension of the conscription debate, the Institute for National Security Studies cited Eichler's claim that during twenty years in opposition, Ben-Gurion and his colleagues had not seriously discussed conscripting yeshiva students — a claim the INSS study placed alongside its own account that Ben-Gurion repeatedly emphasized the need to revise the exemption arrangement, while noting he did not initiate a significant political move to fundamentally change it.[12]

In September 2026, Ynet reported that Eichler would not stand as a candidate in the election for the 26th Knesset on the UTJ list representing Agudat Yisrael.[7] The Belz Rebbe selected Rabbi Elikim Stark to replace Eichler as the movement's representative on the list, while Eichler was assigned to lead the movement's Mahzikei Hadat organization.[8] His move away from electoral politics followed a career spanning almost continuously from 2003 and encompassing service as a Knesset member, Deputy Speaker, committee chairman, housing minister, and deputy communications minister.[3][8]

Eichler has been a source of controversy on several occasions, primarily through sharp public statements on religious and political disputes.

On the question of prayer at the Western Wall, Eichler wrote to Prime Minister Netanyahu comparing Women of the Wall members who read Torah at the site to the vandals who attacked a church on the Sea of Galilee, calling them "not any less dangerous" than those perpetrators.[25] The Anti-Defamation League condemned the comparison as offensive and warned it would deepen divisions among Jews.[25] Separately, in September 2017, Eichler described the non-Orthodox Jewish movements involved in a Western Wall egalitarian prayer agreement as "enemies of the Jewish religion" — a remark documented in the U.S. Department of State's 2017 International Religious Freedom Report.[26] The dispute arose from a January 2016 compromise for egalitarian prayer south of the main plaza; after ultra-Orthodox parties objected, the cabinet voted in June 2017 to freeze the arrangement.[26]

In 2016, ahead of a Knesset debate on non-Orthodox conversion immersions in public mikvahs, Eichler was reported to have compared Reform religious authorities to a mentally ill person entering an operating room to dictate medical rules, and argued that the Supreme Court lacked authority to enforce Jewish law.[27]

In September 2023, responding to Prime Minister Netanyahu's warning about Israeli travel to Uman, Ukraine, Eichler made a series of historically contested claims — including that Zionists and partisans had not prevented the Holocaust, that German forces were stopped from reaching the Land of Israel by miracles rather than by Zionist action, and that Zionist leaders had refused to approve Holocaust rescue plans.[28] These are Eichler's reported assertions, not established historical findings. Education Minister Yoav Kisch publicly called on Eichler to retract what he described as anti-Zionist remarks, and MK Naama Lazimi also condemned them.[18]

In a 2022 article, Eichler criticized Israeli policy concerning Arab citizens, the Haredi population, and those eligible under the Law of Return, arguing that Israel's establishment failed to recognize threats including secularism, Arab nationalism, and Islamism.[29] He also criticized Theodor Herzl's treatment of Arab subjects in The Jewish State, writing that for Herzl, "The Arabs simply did not exist for him."[29]