Opinion Gaza conflict could end Israel’s unfair draft exemption for Orthodox Jews

Granted, it is by no means wise to speculate about the ultra-Orthodox, often called Haredim. They have managed to close this association since the community’s inauguration in 1948, when Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion approved scholars exempt from military service in yeshivot – theological faculties. The theory was that the Jewish people, who had been destroyed by the Holocaust, could revive knowledge about the Torah and Talmud, the rabbinical dialogues of Jewish law.

At that day, the number of selected scholars used to be 400. This increased marginally to 800 after the 1967 war. These days, the total number of excluded people has risen to a record 66,000, as Haredi people have grown to more than 13 percent of the population. Most Jewish Israeli men must serve in uniform for 32 months and Jewish women for two years. (Career is not mandatory for Palestinian voters of Israel.) But the Haredi are now not only spared – they also get a stipend from status regardless of life 26, when the federal government will pay the yeshivot on which they live by the hundreds of thousands. I know thousands more.

To protect this trade, the ultra-Orthodox have skillfully channeled their growing numbers into political energy. Two ultra-Orthodox parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism, are part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s narrow ruling coalition — and are now threatening to bolt if the top court’s ruling is implemented.

This imbalance between rights and responsibilities is untenable, and has been so for years. However, the war in Gaza and the blackmail of more hostilities on the northern border with Lebanon may have harmed the spell: approximately 360,000 reservists are called up the following October 7, and Israel Security Forces increased tours of responsibility for both draftees. Have given. And reserved. Infantrymen are dying. The family members are worried. The financial system is disrupted.

And yet the ultra-Orthodox, probably most of the class, persist in their isolation, insisting that they lend status through devotion and learning about Torah. The excitement over this is, clearly, the chutzpah evident and repeatedly. The outrage spans from left to right, secular to conservative. A March poll through the Israel Independence Institute found that 70 percent of respondents believe the exemptions should be revised.

Meanwhile, the blow of October 7 has produced a fracture, if only to hairline proportions, within the ultra-Orthodox’s traditionally steadfast refusal to trust military carriers in any way. Some of the Haredim, the military carriers, are not simply discouraged – people are likely to avoid enrolling, and less than 10 percent do so. This opposing stance makes some sense: The army is Israel’s melting pot, and for the Haredi, assimilation is existential blackmail. Allowing your young society to be exposed to another generation of media is likely to lead to them being seduced by it.

This can set up a transfer. In the weeks leading up to October 7, thousands of Haredi men volunteered for the responsibility. Polling of ultra-Orthodox people showed greater support for the military carrier.

However, this is not the mainstream Haredi view. Prominent Sephardic rabbi Yitzhak Yosef warned that the ultra-Orthodox would leave the country if the exemption was eliminated. Yosef said, “If they force us to go into the army, we will all go abroad.” “All these secular people do not understand that without yeshivas, the army will not succeed. …Soldiers succeed only because of those who learn Torah.” Once again, the guaranteed “chutzpah” comes to mind.

Court is also a very coercive system. The Supreme Court, Israel’s model court, has stated several times since 1998 that the blanket immunity violates clear considerations of equality. In 2017, the court gave the government a date to make the backup, although the government has managed to prevent the changes through the layout of legislative and regulatory workarounds.

The original waiver expired on April 1, and the top court ordered a freeze on the budget for the Yeshivot in the absence of any legislative resolution, rejecting Netanyahu’s argument that he wanted the interday day because of the conflict. Specifically, the attorney general, who received privileges from Netanyahu, told the court that the government has no criminal grounds to proceed with removing the ultra-Orthodox from military service. (The rulings on military carriers are perhaps the most underlying cause of the federal government’s failed efforts to undermine the court’s independence.)

I wrote seriously about this issue during a visit to Israel several years ago, when a particular Netanyahu coalition was considering how to reduce immunity. That never happened – although this day feels different because of the pressure of the conflict and a new phase of congestion. Then the closest, Yohanan Plessner, used to be a member of the Israeli Knesset who chaired a committee to rewrite the foundation on the carrier. These days, he is president of the Israel Independence Institute, a non-partisan think tank. “We thought this problem could grow quietly and we could ignore it,” Plessner told me before the actual decision. “october. 7 put it at the center of public debate, and can no longer be ignored.

So, I requested Plessner, is that cruel day over? He replied, “Time is up” only in films, not in politics. However, he said, “time is not on the side of those who want to maintain the current state of exemptions.”

And it could be a glimmer of good information in an otherwise dreary day for Israel.