🔗 Share this article

A looming political storm over drafting ultra-Orthodox Jews into the military is jeopardizing the governing coalition and dividing the state.

Popular sentiment on the question has shifted dramatically in Israel in the wake of two years of conflict, and this is now possibly the most explosive political risk facing the Prime Minister.

The Legal Conflict

Legislators are reviewing a proposal to terminate the deferment granted to Haredi students dedicated to yeshiva learning, established when the the nation was founded in 1948.

This arrangement was struck down by the Supreme Court almost 20 years ago. Stopgap solutions to maintain it were finally concluded by the judiciary last year, compelling the cabinet to commence conscription of the Haredi sector.

Roughly 24,000 draft notices were issued last year, but merely about 1,200 men from the community enlisted, according to army data presented to lawmakers.

Tensions Boil Over Onto the Streets

Strains are boiling over onto the public squares, with lawmakers now discussing a new conscription law to force ultra-Orthodox men into military service in the same way as other secular Israelis.

Two Haredi politicians were harassed this month by radical elements, who are enraged with parliament's discussion of the proposed law.

And last week, a specialized force had to assist Military Police officers who were surrounded by a large crowd of Haredi men as they sought to apprehend a suspected draft-evader.

These enforcement actions have sparked the creation of a new alert system named "Black Alert" to send out instant alerts through Haredi neighborhoods and summon activists to stop detentions from taking place.

"We're a Jewish country," stated Shmuel Orbach. "One cannot oppose Judaism in a nation founded on Jewish identity. That is untenable."

An Environment Separate

However the shifts sweeping across Israel have failed to penetrate the environment of the Kisse Rahamim yeshiva in an ultra-Orthodox city, an ultra-Orthodox city on the fringes of Tel Aviv.

Within the study hall, young students sit in pairs to debate Judaism's religious laws, their brightly coloured writing books contrasting with the lines of formal attire and small black kippahs.

"Come at one in the morning, and you will see many of the students are pursuing religious study," the leader of the seminary, the spiritual guide, said. "Through religious study, we shield the military personnel in the field. This is our army."

Haredi Jews maintain that continuous prayer and Torah learning defend Israel's soldiers, and are as essential to its security as its tanks and air force. This tenet was acknowledged by the nation's leaders in the previous eras, Rabbi Mazuz said, but he admitted that the nation is evolving.

Growing Societal Anger

The Haredi community has more than doubled its proportion of the country's people over the past seven decades, and now represents around one in seven. What began as an exception for a few hundred yeshiva attendees turned into, by the onset of the 2023 war, a cohort of some 60,000 men exempt from the conscription.

Surveys show approval of ending the exemption is growing. A poll in July showed that a large majority of the broader Jewish public - even a significant majority in Netanyahu's own right-wing Likud party - backed consequences for those who ignored a draft order, with a clear majority in supporting cutting state subsidies, travel documents, or the franchise.

"It makes me feel there are people who live in this country without contributing," one military member in Tel Aviv commented.

"It is my belief, however religious you are, [it] should be an justification not to go and serve your nation," said a Tel Aviv resident. "As a citizen by birth, I find it rather absurd that you want to exempt yourself just to learn in a yeshiva all day."

Views from Within Bnei Brak

Support for extending the draft is also coming from religious Jews outside the ultra-Orthodox sector, like a Bnei Brak inhabitant, who is a neighbor of the seminary and points to observant but non-Haredi Jews who do enlist in the army while also maintaining their faith.

"I am frustrated that this community don't enlist," she said. "It is unjust. I also believe in the Jewish law, but there's a proverb in Jewish tradition - 'Safra and Saifa' – it represents the Torah and the guns together. That is the path, until the messianic era."

The resident runs a local tribute in the neighborhood to fallen servicemen, both observant and non-observant, who were fallen in war. Lines of images {