AG instructs defense minister to enact sanctions on draft-dodging ultra-Orthodox
Baharav-Miara says that with military enlistment not meeting targets, Katz must hold an urgent hearing to advance punitive measures
Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara told Defense Minister Israel Katz Wednesday that he should hold discussions on applying sanctions to individual ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students who have failed to enlist to the IDF, either through a government resolution or administrative order.
The attorney general noted that in a Monday meeting, security officials pointed out that enlistment figures for 2024-2025 did not fulfill the IDF’s needs.
The purpose of the meeting was to prepare an update for the High Court of Justice on the implementation of the court’s June 2024 ruling that ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students are legally obligated to enlist in the IDF and that the government must begin to draft them.
Officials from the defense establishment, the Finance Ministry and the Justice Ministry said at that meeting that personal sanctions on draft dodgers, including revoking privileges and increasing administrative and economic sanctions, were critical for boosting enlistment figures.
Baharav-Miara said of the proposals presented: “A substantial proportion of them could be advanced immediately, including simply through a government resolution or administrative decision, without the need for legislation.”
She told Katz, “In this situation, as the minister in charge of the military on behalf of the government, it is necessary for you to lead an urgent hearing on the matter to make decisions regarding the needs of the IDF and the targets presented by the state to the High Court.”
In June 2024, the High Court ruled that the government must draft ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students into the military, since there was no longer any legal framework to continue the decades-long practice of granting them blanket exemptions from service.
Haredi leaders vehemently oppose members of the community serving in the military, fearing they will be secularized. The issue, long a sensitive one in Israeli public discourse due to the perceived inequality created by the blanket exemption, has taken on renewed urgency with the military contending with a severe manpower shortage since the outbreak of the war in Gaza in October 2023.
Under pressure from his ultra-Orthodox allies, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly promised a quick resolution to the issue in recent months.
Despite the prime minister’s assurances, a bill dealing with the issue of enlistment is currently stuck in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, whose chairman, Likud MK Yuli Edelstein, has stated that he will “only produce a real conscription law that will significantly increase the IDF’s conscription base.”
Edelstein declared last month that any enlistment bill must also provide for individual sanctions on Haredi draft dodgers.
“There is a demand by the [Finance Ministry] Budget Department for personal sanctions… So I am announcing that there will be [both] personal and institutional sanctions. We want to bring soldiers to the IDF, and therefore, the law that comes out of this committee will include a comprehensive and inclusive answer,” he said.
In a position paper sent to the committee, the head of the Budget Department insisted that conscripting large numbers of ultra-Orthodox Israelis for military service depends on the implementation of hard-hitting, long-term sanctions on draft dodgers.
In his letter, Yogev Gardos wrote that sanctions would only be effective if they have a significant impact on household income, continue “over a long period of time,” and cannot be bypassed through alternative funding channels.
According to Gardos, benefits that could be cut under a sanctions regime for draft dodgers include daycare subsidies, yeshiva stipends, discounts on National Insurance Institute payments, housing subsidies and property tax discounts.
In recent days, the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party has upped its threats to bring down the government over the enlistment bill.
Netanyahu and Haredi parties have been tussling over the legislation, with the latter demanding the matter be settled before the 2025 state budget is passed. This is their main point of leverage over the prime minister, as failure to approve the budget before the end of March would automatically trigger new elections.
The prime minister has sought to convince ultra-Orthodox leaders to first pass the budget in order to ensure the government’s survival, promising enlistment will be tackled soon afterward, but they appear to be doubtful he will keep his word.
United Torah Judaism leader Housing Minister Yitzchak Goldknopf said late last month that if a bill to exclude most Haredim from conscription is not passed before the state budget, it will never be passed. He declared that the controversial legislation must be given priority or the government will fall.
According to a report in the Hamodia daily, which is affiliated with Goldknopf’s Gur Hasidic movement, the housing minister complained during a UTJ faction meeting in the Knesset that a bill enshrining yeshiva students’ military exemptions should have been passed a long time ago, but Netanyahu’s government has repeatedly given excuses and postponed its advancement.
“We have two options before us: either they put off the conscription bill and we go to summer elections, or they insist on the conscription bill before the budget and the government completes its term,” Goldknopf said.
Minister of Jerusalem Affairs and Jewish Heritage Meir Porush, also of UTJ, ridiculed the attorney general in a statement Wednesday, saying she “continues to make a fool of herself with her delusional persecution of Torah students, even after it is clear to her beyond a shadow of a doubt that sanctions will not cause yeshiva students to close their Talmuds. It is a shame that Likud lawmakers are being dragged along and used…in the legal system’s political game against the Haredi public.”
