Why Israel’s Ultra-Orthodox Don’t Want to Serve in the IDF
27th June 2024
In the middle of a war, Israel’s government is wobbling. Not because of the policy failures that led to the country’s worst disaster ever when Hamas invaded on October 7, 2023; not because of the slow progress of the war, its high human cost or its failure to recover the hostages; not even because of the looming threat of a major escalation in northern Israel and Lebanon. No, the threat to the stability of Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition comes from within, after the Supreme Court ruled that the government must start drafting Haredi (ultra-Orthodox Jewish) men into the Israeli Defense Forces.
In 1948, as the newly-formed state of Israel fought for its independence against the invading armies of its Arab neighbors, David Ben-Gurion, the country’s first prime minister, made a fateful decision: the 400 Haredi men studying in religious seminaries would be exempt from military service. Seen by many as a dying relic of an old world, these few dozen students would be permitted to duck the draft and devote themselves to the full-time study of the Talmud.
Today, there are 63,000 young Haredi men who, were it not for Ben-Gurion’s decision, would be eligible to be drafted. Many of these men are effectively stuck studying, unable to join the workforce because leaving the seminary before the military exemption age of twenty-five would mean they’re obliged to join the IDF. Others, possibly thousands, are fraudulently claiming to be studying while they work “off the books” and avoid service.