Ultra-Orthodox Jews not exempt from Israeli draft, high court rules

Israel’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled unanimously that the military must begin drafting ultra-Orthodox Jewish seminary students. Haredi Jews have for decades avoided the national mandatory military service that requires 18-year-old men to serve for three years and women to serve for two years. Israeli Arabs are exempt from compulsory service under the law, and there are exemptions for women who are religious, pregnant, and married. The court’s ruling also requires the government to withdraw funding for religious schools, or yeshivas, whose students do not comply with the draft.

Who are the ultra-Orthodox Jews? Haredi Jews prioritize religious study of the Torah and are theologically, politically, and socially conservative. The group minimizes contact with the world outside its community to protect its values and practices.

Why were they exempt from service? Former Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion in 1948 agreed to exempt Haredi Jews whose full-time occupation was studying the Torah, according to the Israel Policy Forum. In 2014, the government passed a law requiring the Israel Defense Forces to draft a percentage of draft-age Haredi men that increased each year. Under the law, all Haredi men would have been required to enlist if the quota of 60 percent was not met by 2017. The Israeli Supreme Court in 2017 struck down the 2014 law and gave the government one year to pass a new law.

The court issued a series of extensions for the government to pass new legislation and temporarily allowed Haredi men to continue to defer the draft by remaining in religious schools until age 26 when they could be permanently exempt. The court extensions officially expired last year but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conservative government continued to permit them not to serve. The high court in March of this year ordered the government to freeze funding to yeshivas that did not send their students to the military, effectively ending the Haredi exemption.

Why is this significant for the government? It’s complicated. Netanyahu’s coalition government relies on the Haredi United Torah Judaism and Shas parties to govern. However, Netanyahu in May attempted to pass a law to press Haredi Jews into service. Ultra-Orthodox lawmaker Moshe Gafni, head of the parliamentary Finance Committee, on Tuesday decried the court’s decision and said the judges do not understand the importance of studying the Torah. Meanwhile, opposition lawmaker and former defense minister Avigdor Lieberman applauded the ruling and said the IDF needs more personnel to fight in the war against Hamas.

Dig deeper: From the WORLD archives, read Jenny Lind Schmitt’s report about how Israel is grappling with the tension between its historic Jewish identity and its ongoing secularization.