The justice minister's remarks come in the context of efforts to increase government benefits for large families. MK Shmuel Halpert (United Torah Judaism) has proposed a bill that would award an additional NIS 1.5 billion in state aid to families with numerous children. The initiative passed a preliminary reading in the Knesset, but a parliamentary maneuver by Meretz blocked the bill's further progress two weeks ago.

In the interview, Beilin said, "There is no connection between the blessing of having children and their number. Families with many children are not necessarily blessed with children. If all of the children are neglected, is this still a blessing?"

He added, "It is as if to say that if I only have two children, my family is not blessed with children." Beilin noted, "There are families in Jerusalem with 15 and 17 children from the same woman. Do these children receive appropriate education and attention?"

Beilin criticized the promise made in the 1950s by Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, to award 100 lirot (the currency at the time) to families with 10 children. "This is an awful statement. What did he do to these women? What did he do to these children? In effect, he called for them to take greater hardships upon themselves. I think this was a big mistake by Ben-Gurion."

Beilin said he favors assisting large, poor families, but opposes "encouraging families to enter this cycle of having many children, [entering] poverty, hardship, frustration and then becoming a burden to society. I am categorically opposed to this type of encouragement and I don't think that it is the role of the state. I don't think the state needs to come to every family that has numerous children and say, 'You receive prizes so that you will have more and more children."

Referring to the current system of child allowances that awards much lower sums for the first three children in a family than for subsequent children, Beilin said, "This is an incentive for [people to have] more children ... I would not want financial considerations to play any role in the decision to have more children.