The hearing held on Monday in Hall D at the Supreme Court marks an important milestone in constructing Israeli statism after October 7. Before a panel of three justices - Wilner, Stein and Grosskopf - a serious public discussion occurred for the first time on discrimination faced by pupils in state-religious education versus those in state-Hebrew education. The funding gap is stark and open: religious students receive tens of percent more support than their secular and traditional peers.

Even before the session the state admitted that benefits had been layered piecemeal in ways that breach the State Education Law yet no serious answer was ever given to why the state funds identity and values work in the state-religious stream but fails to match that scope and investment for secular and traditional pupils. The petition first reported in this column was filed by the Council for Hebrew State Education, the Manor Center and the National Parents Leadership.

During the hearing the flawed logic behind the extra benefits granted solely to religious pupils came to light. The surplus funding stems from two factors: smaller institutions and classes in state-religious education together with stream-specific budgets aimed at forging the religious-Zionist identity of the pupil. These allocations appear in the appointment of a school rabbi overseeing values curricula, funding for seminars and after-school activities and far more costly teaching hours.

According to the state this amounts to roughly ten thousand shekels more per year for a religious high-school pupil than for a secular counterpart. Manor Center estimates that equalizing the streams would require adding no less than 3.6 billion shekels to the state-education budget.

Now for the first time official recognition of this discrimination exists. In the justices' words: "According to the data a gap exists and the state concedes it. The question now is what to do."

The state's response to the court rested on two troubling claims. "As a result of defining state-religious education as state education that is also religious, justification arises for supplementary funding in pedagogical and complementary pedagogical aspects so the pupil receives both general schooling provided to all state-education pupils and Torah-based instruction" - meaning the state-religious pupil is entitled to standard state funding plus extra resources for identity development.

In contrast, the state's reply implies that state-education pupils lack identity, an "empty wagon" to borrow Haredi terminology, and therefore require no such funding. Under Israel's official position no secular or traditional identity exists. Secular or traditional Jews need not build their identity unlike religious pupils.

The second claim is equally grave. It holds that the funding gap arises from "the need to preserve and strengthen the state-religious education system as a meaningful values-based system with deep national belonging and the effort to maintain the state framework for all relevant segments of the religious public given alternative options available to that public." In short, without extra investment the religious public might simply cease being state-oriented. Religious-Zionist statism is conditional and without preferential funding it will fade or seek other paths.

Anyone unwilling to parse the state's full reply needed only to note who attended the hearing. Several state-religious education representatives appeared led by Administration head Rabbi Yoni Samuel while Finance Ministry director-general Israel Malachi sat in the rear benches. Why would one of Israel's busiest senior officials bother attending a High Court session on sectoral budgets? The answer is straightforward. Malachi serves as right-hand aide to Minister Bezalel Smotrich. This sectoral turnout carrying political overtones confirms the petitioners' argument.

Panel head Justice Yael Wilner laid the groundwork with a key observation: "The fact that a certain public holds particular political power should not alter the fact that a child is a child is a child." Wilner herself an observant alumna of a religious academy stated plainly that coalition funds cannot justify discrimination.

If leaders of state-religious education and politicians of religious Zionism were both wise and possessed genuine statist backbone they would have been the first to leverage the petition toward forging deep partnership between the Hebrew state stream and the state-religious stream.

The justices directed the state to conduct comprehensive staff work re-examining all aspects of extra funding in state-religious education and demanded a needs mapping for Hebrew state education. They also set guidelines: "It must be ensured that staff work is weighed against outcome tests" Justice Ofer Grosskopf stressed. "It cannot be that all criteria pass administrative muster yet the gap remains. Equal education cannot exist when a pupil in state-religious education receives 28 percent more." Even if the state proves every funding regulation meets strict standards society cannot accept such a disparity in child funding.

Another significant statement noted that "state-religious budgets have been tailored to their needs... state-Hebrew education budgets must be tailored to their needs." For the first time mechanisms will be built to realize secular and traditional identity in Israel.

The hearing itself carries weight yet the larger story is the stirring awakening of Israel's state public. This public is steadily building its own institutions and spokespeople and articulating its identity in positive terms. The simple request is not to take anything from any child but rather to grant every girl and boy in Israel an equal chance to form a solid identity base and deep belonging to the Israeli sphere. Such investment repays itself and therefore no reason exists to discriminate against secular traditional or Arab children.

The petition could have become a moving moment of solidarity and rank-breaking yet politicians and operatives again cling to a narrow sectoral prism. State-religious institution heads cry foul and in an unusual step even sought funding for legal representation in the petition securing signatures from directors of major religious-school networks across the religious-Zionist spectrum. This display of sectoral power once more proves that those insisting on tribal conduct and self-interest alone can never offer relevant leadership for the State of Israel.

If state-religious leaders and religious-Zionist politicians were both wise and equipped with genuine statist backbone they would have been first to harness the petition for creating deep partnership between the Hebrew state stream and the state-religious stream. Together they could have demanded joint recognition of the importance of identity budgets their regulation their transfer to the base budget and perhaps at last a shared statist tier would have been built in Israel for all pupils. It is still not too late.