Will Drafting Haredi Jews into the Army Ignite an Internal War in 'Israel'?

Confrontations recently broke out between the Israeli police and ultra-Orthodox Haredi yeshiva students, known as the Haredim, during a demonstration in which thousands of them participated in occupied Jerusalem, rejecting attempts to draft them into the army.

According to Hebrew media, the demonstrators attacked the car of Housing Minister Yitzhak Goldknopf and threw stones at him, accusing him of colluding to draft Haredim.

The latest protests are one of many moves in recent months, in response to a landmark ruling by the High Court of Justice last month that ordered the army to begin drafting Haredim and stop funding religious schools that do not comply.

Excluding the Haredim, who say they devote their lives to Torah study to preserve the identity of the Israeli people, from serving in the army has been controversial over the past decades.

While the religious parties oppose the enlistment of the Haredim, the secular and nationalist parties support it, which causes Netanyahu a problem that threatens his ruling coalition.

The Haredim make up 13% of Israel's population (10 million people), a figure expected to reach 19% by 2035 due to their high birth rates.

Political Division

The issue of drafting the Haredim into the Israeli Occupation army sparked widespread controversy within “Israel,” and some political parties and liberal groups objected to singling out the Haredi community and exempting them from conscription, considering that this system encourages political and cultural division in Israeli society.

In turn, Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid stressed the need for the army to respect the law and implement the Supreme Court’s ruling to activate the conscription law, which includes issuing orders to draft 30,000 Haredi men.

On June 25, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled to draft the Haredim into the army, which sparked widespread controversy in “Israel”, given the previous exemptions that allowed this group to avoid military service.

The Court did not set a specific enlistment number in the ruling, but Israel's attorney general's office suggested that at least 3,000 ultra-Orthodox soldiers enlist in the next year.

The Court's ruling said around 63,000 ultra-Orthodox students are eligible for enlistment.

Haredi party lawmakers have long viewed the conscription of yeshiva students as a red line that threatens their fragile alliance with Netanyahu, who relies on their support to maintain his slim majority in the Knesset.

The government coalition led by Netanyahu has 64 seats out of 120 in Parliament. The majority of it depends on two Haredi Jewish parties, which control 18 seats.

For Netanyahu, the risks are high, as although public opinion seems to support repealing the exemption, his government includes two religious parties whose withdrawal from the coalition could lead to new elections that polls indicate that Netanyahu will lose.

Previously, the two ultra-Orthodox parties, United Torah Judaism and Shas, pledged to confront any attempts to draft Haredim.

Netanyahu's government is already trying to draft a law that is consistent with the Supreme Court's ruling without angering his coalition partners.

Last May 15, Netanyahu said that he would revive a 2022 Bill to lower yeshiva students' age of exemption from military service, after he failed to reach an agreement with his Haredi partners in the government coalition on new legislation to draft members of the Haredi community into the Israeli army.

Unclear Mechanism

On his part, Israeli Army Minister Yoav Gallant told lawmakers that government regulations rather than legislation should be used to address the sticky situation of how the military deals with drafting members of the ultra-Orthodox community.

“The army currently requires some 10,000 new soldiers, but can only accommodate the enlistment of an additional 3,000 ultra-Orthodox this year, which would be in addition to the 1,800 Haredi soldiers who are drafted annually,” Gallant said.

After the recent Supreme Court ruling, the Israeli Occupation army will soon begin sending conscription orders to approximately 63,000 religious school students eligible for military service, without the mechanism being clear yet.

There are two main options for the army to draft Haredim into its ranks. The first is to conduct a random lottery for those eligible for enlistment, regardless of their number, according to the Times of Israel.

But implementing such a mechanism would risk a head-on confrontation with the ultra-Orthodox community and its leadership if young men at elite yeshivas who are the veritable apple of the ultra-Orthodox community’s eye end up getting drafted.

“The alternative is to attract the low-hanging fruit – namely young people from the modern Haredi community and those who attend leaky yeshivas where little religious studies are undertaken,” Ravitzky Tor Paz said.

Exemption from the draft for ultra-Orthodox Jews has become a particularly tense issue because Israel's armed forces, made up mostly of young drafts and older civilians mobilized as reserves, have become exhausted by the multi-front war.

Internal War

The American magazine Newsweek said that there is a war currently raging inside Israel between secularists and religious people, against the backdrop of the Supreme Court’s ruling requiring the Haredim to join the army.

The ruling also stipulates that males from the Haredi sect will no longer receive any government funding to study Jewish texts in religious schools.

Rabbi Heshy Grossman told Newsweek after the ruling: “One thing is certain: not one Yeshiva student will leave his studies to join the army when being coerced to do so.”

“We believe that the Supreme Court has exceeded its mandate and should not be taking authority over matters of religious life,” he added.

Grossman said the Haredim cannot simply change their draft exemption status, which is the only thing the secular state wants.

In his exciting statements, he went on to say: “There is no trust between the Haredim and the rest of Israeli society.”

According to Newsweek, polls show that the rest of the Israelis do not support exempting this sect from conscription, and even talk about how their army has become fragile and needs more soldiers, stressing that the rise in the numbers of Haredim constitutes a drain on the state’s resources.

It is noteworthy that the issue of ultra-Orthodox enlistment toppled a previous Netanyahu-led coalition government in 2018, precipitating years of political deadlock.

The exemption for the Haredim goes back to the first days after the declaration of the establishment of the state of “Israel” in 1948, when David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister, exempted about 400 students from military service so that they could devote themselves to religious study.

Through this, Ben-Gurion hoped to protect Jewish knowledge and traditions after they were almost erased during the Holocaust.

Since 2017, successive Israeli governments have failed to reach a consensus law regarding Haredi enlistment after the Supreme Court annulled a law enacted in 2015 that exempted them from military service, considering that the exemption violates the principle of equality.

Since then, the Knesset has continued to extend their exemption from military service.

Last February, the Supreme Court issued an order demanding that the government explain why the Haredim were not drafted.

Last March, the Court issued a temporary order to stop financial support for students of Torah institutions who are required to enlist.

It is noteworthy that the Israeli army includes 169,000 soldiers in regular active service, and about 465,000 in the reserve.

Military service is compulsory in “Israel” for men and women over the age of 18. Men serve for 32 months, and women serve for 24 months.