After October 7, IDF said to increase penalties for deserters, but not draft dodgers
‘Haredi evaders did not suffer at all according to this enforcement policy,’ says former chief military defense counsel
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
Following the outbreak of the war in the Gaza Strip in October 2023, the Israel Defense Forces significantly increased penalties for desertion against regular service and reserve troops, without a corresponding change in legal consequences for draft evaders, the IDF’s former chief military defense counsel alleged this week.
In a report commissioned by the Israel Hofsheet religious liberty organization and a subsequent interview with The Times of Israel, Col. (res.) Ran Cohen Rochverger noted that the decision not to strengthen enforcement against evaders has largely benefited the ultra-Orthodox community, which constitutes the bulk of draft evaders in Israel.
According to Rochverger, some six weeks after October 7, the IDF implemented a new, stricter enforcement policy “significantly lowering the threshold for prosecution” for desertion so that “even relatively short
absences” from service, which would previously have been grounds for non-judicial punishment, would be grounds for criminal charges.
This led to a significant increase in the number of indictments filed against reservists in the period before the termination of this policy in late April 2025.
In one case listed by Rochverger, an IDF reservist was sentenced to 90 days in prison after being absent without leave for six weeks, although he was suffering from a mental condition that resulted in the lowering of his service profile.
Many IDF reservists have gone through multiple rounds of duty, totaling hundreds of days, leading to severe economic stress.
At the same time as it bolstered the punishment for desertion, the IDF “avoided lowering the standard criminal prosecution standard in relation to evaders,” Rochverger wrote.
The army has stated that it currently needs some 12,000 new soldiers to meet manpower needs amid the ongoing war, 7,000 of whom would be combat troops.
Currently, approximately 80,000 Haredi men between the ages of 18 and 24 are eligible for military service and have not enlisted. The IDF has sent out 18,915 initial draft orders to members of the Haredi community in several waves since July 2024, but, as of late April, only 232 of those who received orders have enlisted — 57 of them in combat roles.
Speaking with The Times of Israel on Wednesday evening, Rochverger asserted that while the IDF’s policies do not explicitly reference Haredim, and enforcement is the same against all draft evaders, this is not the whole story.
“Draft evaders are treated in a much more lenient way than deserters,” he said. “And of course there are still secular draft evaders, but there are many, many Haredi evaders, so… the Haredi evaders did not suffer at all according to this enforcement policy,” he said.
For draft dodgers classified as deserters, “the courts did increase the severity of punishments, but to a much more moderate and limited extent,” and not as part of any overarching military policy, he added.
Asked for comment, the army told The Times of Israel in a statement that it “enforces the law against the phenomenon of absenteeism, without any distinction regarding the identity of the accused who commit the offense or their affiliation with one or another population group.”
“Since the beginning of the war, and in light of the severe consequences of this phenomenon, the Military Prosecution Office has updated its policy regarding absenteeism, and, among other things, has requested more onerous punishment, due to the severe impact of the phenomenon on the war effort,” the IDF stated.
“Accordingly, since the beginning of the war, there has been an increase in the levels of punishment for those who are absent from regular or reserve military service. There has also been a tightening of the disciplinary policy with respect to draft evaders, and this is implemented consistently, taking into account the circumstances of each individual case,” it said.
Addressing the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Wednesday, Brig. Gen. Shay Tayeb, head of the IDF Personnel Directorate’s Planning and Personnel Management Division, said that the IDF has three main enforcement mechanisms: stopping people at Ben Gurion Airport, random police checks, and dedicated operations against evaders.
Such operations have been limited over the last year-and-a-half as the bulk of the military police’s resources have been tied up in imprisoning captured terrorists, he stated.
As of early February, arrest warrants had been issued for 1,212 Haredim who ignored enlistment orders, a number that has likely increased in the interim.
The consequences of being declared a draft evader include receiving a “no exit order” — being barred from leaving the country — and during any encounter with the police, the draft dodger can be arrested.
The IDF Military Police does not actually carry out arrests of those who do not show up to induction centers, but instead waits until they are declared draft evaders and leaves it to law enforcement.
At the same time, the IDF seems determined to increase enlistment of the ultra-Orthodox, with Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir on Tuesday ordering the IDF Personnel Directorate to immediately provide a plan to “expand and maximize” the number of draft orders sent to young ultra-Orthodox men — enraging the Haredi community.
But while national broadcaster Kan reported that Defense Minister Katz is set on preventing enforcement against those ignoring new enlistment orders — due to the need to pacify his Haredi coalition partners — Channel 12 reported on Wednesday that the IDF is preparing to launch what it described as “targeted enforcement actions against deserters and draft evaders.”
Despite this, the military’s options are limited in the face of such widespread refusal, as authorities are unlikely to attempt to criminally charge tens of thousands of people.
While the Attorney General’s Office has argued that the government has the authority to impose sanctions on draft evaders without the passage of new legislation, the government has not done so, prompting demands for the passage of an ultra-Orthodox enlistment bill mandating harsh consequences for refusing to enlist.
Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Yuli Edelstein, whose panel is currently working on a bill dealing with the issue, has said that he supports both personal sanctions and sanctions against Haredi institutions if recruitment targets are not met.
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