It's like Israeli Knesset Member Moshe Gafni (United Torah Judaism) said. Hezbollah didn't discriminate.

Neither do the PFLP, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, or Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade for that matter. Their Qassams, Katyushas and Ra'ad missiles were, in some places, the most egalitarian things going on, killing without regard to religious observance or ethnic origin. The suicide bombers and terrorists see one universal color -- "enemy" -- which can transcend even "Jew" or "Zionist". (And if you think it can't, I know at least one family in Italy who would beg to differ.)

People died equally, people were damaged equally. But equal is not so "equal" in Israel once you put on a black yarmulke. The Jerusalem Post reports:

MK Moshe Gafni (United Torah Judaism) said on Wednesday that the Education Ministry's approach to haredi students showed hints of "anti-Semitic discrimination," and that the ministry was breaking the law by refusing to give equal funding to haredi schools.

In response to the data presented at the Knesset's Education Committee, which showed that haredi schools in the North were not supplied with science kits or computers, Gafni pointed out that during the war last summer, Hizbullah had treated all students, including haredi ones, equally as Jews - something the Education Ministry was not doing.

Education Minister Yuli Tamir said that she officially showed preference to the national education system and was working to strengthen it.

In Tamir's words, if the haredim want equality, they will have to join the national education system.

And that's how religious schools get treated. And herein lies the paradoxical hypocrisy: one of the main claims the government makes about the religious school system is that they don't teach the "Israeli core curriculum." But here we see -- science kits, computers (and before this it was infrastructure improvements and structural repairs) -- things which are requisite if the core curriculum is even going to begin to be a possibility, these things are being withheld.

"Teach AP chemistry."
"We can't, we don't have beakers."
"So buy beakers."
"We can't because we have no money. So fund our school."
"We won't fund you because you won't teach AP chemistry."
"We can't teach AP chemistry because we don't have beakers!"
"So buy beakers."
And so on and so on, ad infinitum.

Logistic, educational, structural, and environmental (damn, that's a lot) considerations aside, the only thing preventing religious schools from receiving the funding is their eschewing of non-essential subjects and teaching (you guessed it) Torah! The rabid secularists have control of the money, and they will use that control to keep Torah on the backburner, if not out of the "Jewish state" entirely.

Yuli Tamir said last year she was "disturbed" by the haredim (well at least now she's venting) and their lack of allegiance to the state of Israel and lack of identification with its Zionist ideals. But sometimes, it is kind of hard to look at a Lexus-studded driveway in Haifa and say that one has more in common with its driver than the Arabic-speaking co-inhabitant of a gravel lot one shares a trailer schoolhouse with.

And instead of trying to correct at least a little of the inequity, what are religious Jews told? "If the haredim want equality, they will have to join the national education system." Want equality? Stop learning so much Torah.

Just appreciate the gravity of that phrase -- "if they want equality."