Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi on Wednesday sent a strongly worded letter to State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman saying that the IDF’s Home Front Command is failing to provide adequate warnings of missile attacks to the Chareidi sector. Karhi wrote, “Yesterday, Israeli citizens, except for the Chareidim, received alerts about missile fire from Yemen towards Israel. They received the alerts on their smartphones, on television, on the radio, and on siren loudspeakers. “In contrast, Chareidi citizens, who own kosher phones, without television, and who listen to Chareidi radio networks, did not receive advance warnings and life-saving instructions in the north and south. “One of the reasons for this is that yesterday the emergency broadcasts that were approved for Radio Kol Chai and Kol Barama in the north were discontinued, as the Home Front Command and the Technological Division of the IDF refuse to take responsibility for the severe alert gaps in the Chareidi sectors in Israel.” “The following is the sequence of events and the actions I have taken in the matter, which, unfortunately, have been met with an impenetrable wall of inexplicable stubbornness and irresponsibility on the part of those responsible for the security of the country and its citizens.” “Currently, a wide public in these sectors is at a significant disadvantage in terms of access to alerts compared to the rest of the population, both in terms of redundancy and in terms of advance warnings that are not provided by sirens.” Karhi claims that the Home Front Command initially supported his initiative to expand the broadcasts of the Chareidi radio stations, Kol Chai and Kol Barama, to the entire country during the war. However, the Home Front Command later retracted their support, and he accuses them of “mixing extraneous considerations by various elements, not for the benefit of the security of the state and its citizens.” “In a conversation with field personnel in the Home Front Command, their message is unequivocal: ‘If there is no harm to our security frequencies and it expands the means of alert, there is no question at all!! Of course we support it! But unfortunately, it seems that when it comes to the various legal elements, they introduce political considerations, apparently because these are stations that are not to their liking, and disclaim responsibility.'” “The Home Front Command was required to set up its own transmitters throughout the country to allow at least one additional alert means beyond the sirens that provide only an immediate alert. But unfortunately, for reasons of social or political preference, certain elements there are opposing even the independent responsibility shown by the station owners, who in the last two weeks have invested a lot of money to expand the alert means to the public.” “I am not aware of any instruction from the Home Front Command to Israeli citizens to remove the alert applications on mobile phones or to cancel the alert sirens. The threat of missiles has not been removed from the skies of the State of Israel, and therefore, the conduct of the various parties in this matter is puzzling to me. From the viewpoint of safeguarding the security of the country and the security of its citizens, there is no doubt that the alert means should be expanded as much as possible and the existing alert gaps […]