Speaking at a discussion of the Knesset Education Committee on the changing status-quo of religious and ultra-Orthodox education, committee member and chairman of the National Union MK Ya’akov Katz (Ketzaleh) said:
It’s all about the numbers. The change in the status-quo stems from demographic change. When I was in an officer training course 40 years ago, we were three religious cadets out of 150. My children [who are today] officers constitute more than half of the officers corps.”
MK Katz noted that “the religious and Haredi community is growing while the secular are marrying late and do not reproduce. The state must prepare in such a way that the religious and Haredi community should take its place—alongside the study of Torah—in also the fields of science, security and social sciences. In two decades we will have to formulate a status-quo policy for our secular minority.”