AG says army must also draft full-time yeshiva students, not just working Haredim - זה מה שמקבלים הגאונים על התעסקות עם הציונים
IDF’s decision to begin ultra-Orthodox draft with those not studying Torah full-time is legally problematic and constitutes ‘selective enforcement,’ argues deputy Gil Limon
The Attorney General’s Office on Wednesday instructed the Israel Defense Forces to expand its mobilization of ultra-Orthodox men to include full-time yeshiva students and not only those members of the Haredi community who do not study Torah, and who are part of the workforce.
Earlier this month, the IDF announced that it would begin the process of conscription for 3,000 ultra-Orthodox men aged 18-26 in the wake of last month’s High Court ruling that service exemptions, which were previously granted to Haredim, were illegal. The first thousand went out on July 21 and the military is preparing to send out its second batch.
Ahead of this unprecedented mobilization, the IDF asked the National Insurance Institute social security agency to provide it with the employment details of young ultra-Orthodox men who are eligible for military service.
According to the army, the first batches to be mobilized include men who have jobs, are enrolled in institutions of higher education, or hold driver’s licenses — indicators that they are not engaged in full-time yeshiva studies despite having received previous exemptions to study.
In a letter to the IDF, Deputy Attorney General Gil Limon stated that the military “must act immediately to implement the ruling on the recruitment of yeshiva students who are required to do military service, in accordance with the needs of the army and its capabilities,” according to a copy obtained by the Kikar Hashabbat news site.
According to Limon, “the High Court determined that at this time, there is no legal infrastructure to prevent the enlistment of Haredi yeshiva students and the state must act to enforce the provisions of the Security Service Law in their case.”
The Haredi religious and political leadership would fiercely resist and protest any effort to draft mainstream yeshiva students — and it appears that the military intended to first send conscription orders to men who were not involved in yeshiva study as a way of putting off open conflict with the Haredi community.
However, according to Limon, such an approach is legally problematic and failure to recruit yeshiva students while drafting working Haredim “would amount to selective enforcement.”
The Finance Ministry has also warned that enlisting working ultra-Haredim into the army would damage efforts to integrate them into the labor market.
According to the Israel Democracy Institute, at least 22 percent of ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students under the age of 26 are illegally employed, in violation of the terms of their exemption from military service.
These exemptions were vacated by the court’s recent decision, however, and the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee is currently debating how to regulate yeshiva students’ ability to engage in academic study and join the workforce as part of a controversial enlistment bill under discussion.
Addressing the committee earlier this month, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that the military currently requires some 10,000 new soldiers but can only accommodate the enlistment of an additional 3,000 ultra-Orthodox this year, due to their special needs, which would be in addition to the 1,800 Haredi soldiers who are already drafted annually.
Many ultra-Orthodox Jews believe that military service is incompatible with their way of life, and fear that those who enlist will be secularized. Israelis who do serve, however, say the decades-long arrangement of mass exemptions unfairly burdens them, a sentiment that has strengthened since the October 7 Hamas attack and the ensuing war, in which hundreds of soldiers have been killed and over 300,000 citizens called up to reserve duty.
According to a Smith Consulting poll presented to the Knesset State Control Committee this month, while 72% of ultra-Orthodox respondents oppose mobilizing Haredim at age 18 like all other Jewish Israelis, 59% indicated — to one degree or another — that the creation of service tracks which would allow them to maintain their lifestyle would have a beneficial effect on overall enlistment numbers.
The poll showed 22% of Haredim believed that establishing Haredi units would increase enlistment by a small degree, while 27% indicated that they believed it would boost recruitment to “a certain extent but not by much.” A further 10% said it would increase enlistment to “a large extent.”
On Tuesday ultra-Orthodox protesters, chanting “To jail and not the army,” clashed with police outside an IDF enlistment conference in Tel Aviv.