‘This Gap Can No Longer Exist’: Israel Faces Critical Haredi Conscription Decision

Israel grapples with conscripting ultra-Orthodox Jews, an enduring controversy now heightened by war and legal challenges. With the conscription law expiring and public opinion evolving, the debate hits a critical juncture

Israel continues to be sharply divided on the issue of conscripting ultra-Orthodox Jews into the army as the unstable national unity government tries to maneuver between its political considerations and public opinion.

The blanket exemption given to the ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, Jews has stirred controversy for decades. Now, Israel finds itself at a major crossroads, simultaneously deep into a lengthy war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip and fighting on other fronts as the current conscription law, which allows for the exemption, is about to expire, creating a scheduling clash that makes for a major headache for the coalition.

The contentious topic has led to major strikes and protests in recent years, including a debate that toppled the government in 2019. The issue has never been solved, with temporary solutions and interim orders delaying the inevitable. At one point, Israel will have to tackle the problem, and that point may have just arrived.

On Monday, hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Jews blocked a major highway in central Israel in protest of any changes to the current law hours after a Supreme Court order came into effect freezing financial support for Haredi education institutions whose students receive annual deferrals from military service. At the same time, the Defense Ministry was instructed to begin the process of drafting Haredi men.

Military service in Israel is mandatory for both men and women upon reaching the age of 18. Haredi Jews have been exempt from this duty since the state’s founding, as military service is seen as a threat to their strict religious way of life. A series of arrangements has allowed ultra-Orthodox men to receive an exemption by proving they are engaged in full-time religious studies. All religious women in Israel, including the ultra-Orthodox, can receive an automatic exemption with no study requirement. The state has provided substantial funding for those religious institutions that are home to the young men who study.

“The Haredi Jews seek to preserve the Torah world,” Yitzik Crombie, an ultra-Orthodox entrepreneur and author of When the Haredim Will Be a Majority, told The Media Line. “Our right to exist as Jews in Israel is based on Israel being a Jewish state, not a state for the Jews. Without studying Torah, the whole story of Jews in Israel is in question. It is the reason why we fight and are killed here. Without studying, is this sacrifice really worth it?”

Within the Haredi community, growing numbers of members admit that there are young men who are fictitiously registered as full-time religious students. Some work undocumented, and others receive state funds but do not study, serve in the army, or work. Various surveys estimate that about 30% of these men are of conscription age. The willingness to tolerate this among populations who do serve in the army, mainly secular Jews, has gradually decreased in recent years.

According to Crombie, the political leadership of the Haredi Jews is reluctant to make any concessions for fear that it will lead to still more concessions.

“Behind closed doors, they are more pragmatic, but they are afraid to say so publicly,” he told The Media Line. “This is not a political struggle, however; it is a real question about our existence here, our security, our stability, and social cohesion. This is being missed by the Haredi leadership.”

The war caught Israel by surprise and confronted it with a reality that its leadership and many of the leading Haredi figures were intent on avoiding.

On Oct. 7, the war erupted with an attack by the Hamas terrorist group. Approximately 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals were killed and thousands of others were injured. Over 250 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the resulting ground operation against Hamas. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers were called up for reserve duty, many of them serving for over three months.

While Israel has fought several wars since its establishment in 1948, the latest war has seen its abilities stretched to the limit. Also critical is the growth in Israel’s population. When the exemption was given, Israel was a tiny country with approximately 800,000 people. It has now grown to almost 10 million in less than 80 years.

The proportion of ultra-Orthodox Jews is also growing. In 1948, there were approximately 40,000 Haredi Jews. At the start of 2023, they were roughly 14% of the population, according to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics. With the highest growth rate of any population in developed nations, their proportion of the population is expected to reach 16% in 2030 and quickly cross the 2-million mark.

Currently, the number of Haredi men drafted to the army remains almost insignificant, at a few hundred. However, as much as the army needs those conscripts, it is not prepared for a large-scale Haredi draft, which requires adaptations to their stringent lifestyle, as there are only a handful of battalions suitable for Haredi combat soldiers.

For secular Israelis, compulsory military service is a significant part of their identity and serves as a right of passage that they are expected to take part in. The ultra-Orthodox community sees the educational and cultural aspects of military service as a threat to their closed society. These feelings have changed on both sides.

“The feeling is that a major event happened, and if so, it appears Israel is on the verge of reorganizing its social contracts with the army,” Dr. Idit Shafran Gittleman, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, told The Media Line. “This is accompanied by the feeling that the Haredi society now needs to decide whether it is with the majority of society or not, and if it is, then a blind eye can no longer be turned to the exemption.”

Before the war, the army was contemplating a shortened compulsory service for some of the men who currently serve for three years. This was immediately ditched at the onset of the war, and now, an extension of compulsory service is being discussed.

“While the Haredi population is not going into the army, the burden on the population that does is only growing,” said Shafran Gittleman. “This gap can no longer exist.”

“If Israel thought it could rely on a small, technology-based army, Oct 7 was a sobering moment,” she said. “Such a notion—which was also adopted by the military itself—has passed from the world.”

October 7 shocked Israelis to the core, and for a few weeks, there was a feeling of great solidarity between the different parts of society. The scenes of Hamas’ attack helped bring the people together temporarily, and organizations such as Brothers and Sisters in Arms—which were prominent in anti-government protests—shifted their focus from demonstrations to helping people and businesses affected by the war.

“For 75 years, we lived in a distorted reality in which there is complete inequality in the main burden that the Israeli secular public takes part in,” Yaron Kramer, a 52-year-old attorney and activist in the Brothers and Sisters in Arms grassroots protest group, told The Media Line. “On October 7, we realized that beyond the basic fact there is a need for equality, there is a huge need in the army for more soldiers.”

“The duty to the Torah does not diminish the duty to the state, like any other citizen,” said Kramer. “The Haredi soldier needs to be able to maintain his lifestyle; we do not want to impose secularism on them. But the current reality can no longer exist.”

Kramer and others have been staging demonstrations in recent weeks calling for early elections. “For months, there was no dilemma,” he told The Media Line. “We weren’t in the streets, and we focused on helping civil society, trying to make Israel better. But now, six months into the war, the argument that we cannot protest so long as the cannons are shooting isn’t valid anymore because Israel’s security reality means we could be at war for a very long time.”