AG orders daycare funding cut for ultra-Orthodox students who defy draft orders
In letter to labor minister, Baharav-Miara says no justification to subsidize those who don’t serve; Shas party calls move a ‘mark of Cain’ on legal system
Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara ordered Labor Minister Yoav Ben-Tzur on Sunday to cut daycare subsidies for the children of ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students who refuse to obey military draft orders.
In a letter to the minister, Baharav-Miara explained that since the High Court has ruled that members of the ultra-Orthodox community, or Haredim, must be inducted into the army — as are the bulk of Israelis — there was no longer a legal basis for the state to fund daycare for those who don’t comply.
“The conclusion is that there is no longer any justification to fund the daycare as an incentive for Torah studies for those who are designated for military service but have not shown up to be drafted,” she wrote.
She said subsidies must be halted for any household where there is a member who is dodging the draft.
Baharav-Miara added that the move will start in the upcoming school year but will not influence the registration of children at daycare centers — only the subsidies that their families receive.
Ben Tzur is a member of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, which opposes drafting members of its community.
Shas in a statement accused Baharav-Miara of bullying.
“The decision to deny working ultra-Orthodox mothers the subsidy for daycare three weeks before the start of the school year, just because the husband is studying Torah, is cruel legal bullying and abuse of helpless children,” the party said.
Shas called the order a “mark of Cain on the forehead of the legal system, which is supposed to be the protector and supporter for women who have decided to enter the workforce and contribute to the Israeli economy.”
Many Haredi women work to support their families while their husbands study Torah in yeshivas.
The leader of Shas’s allied ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, Housing Minister Yitzhak Goldknopf, called the attorney general’s move “scandalous and discriminatory.”
“This is a direct attack against ultra-Orthodox women who go out to work for a living, and seek to maintain a Torah lifestyle,” he said in a statement. “This is another attempt to harm the ultra-Orthodox public in various and cruel ways. Torah Judaism will act with all the tools at its disposal to ensure that the families of the Jews are not harmed.”
Jerusalem and Heritage Minister Meir Porush of UTJ said the attorney general’s letter was a political ploy to attack Haredi family life.
“The attorney general reveals the truth — they are not interested in the needs of the army, but only in obsessive persecution of the Torah world and the ultra-Orthodox family,” Porush said in a statement. “The legal system drags small children into a political battle and works to starve them. They have no restraint.”
Baharav-Miara’s order came after the IDF last week moved to begin drafting some 3,000 Haredim, in line with a High Court ruling that there is no longer a legal justification to avoid doing so.
However, only 48 of the 900 who received draft orders showed up amid large-scale protests, the military said.
The head of army personnel said the low turnout may be due in part to the recent violent anti-draft riots, which have frightened away potential recruits. Police clashed with ultra-Orthodox demonstrators at the Tel Hashomer military recruitment office last Monday. Then, on Tuesday, dozens of ultra-Orthodox extremist protesters breached the base.
The draft orders are the first stage in the screening and evaluation process that the army carries out for new recruits, ahead of their enlistment in the military.
Last month, the High Court ruled that there was no longer any legal framework allowing the state to refrain from drafting Haredi yeshiva students into military service, and the attorney general ordered the government to immediately begin the process of conscription for 3,000 such men — the number the military has said it is able to process at this preliminary stage.
In March, the High Court ruled the state could no longer funnel money to yeshivas for some 50,000 students eligible to be drafted into the military, following the expiration of regulations that exempted members of the ultra-Orthodox community engaged in Jewish studies.
Prominent ultra-Orthodox rabbis have urged yeshiva students to ignore any communication from the IDF, and parties that represent the Haredi community have escalated threats to leave the coalition if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government fails to pass a law to largely exempt Haredi men from military service.
The dispute over the ultra-Orthodox community serving in the military is one of the most contentious in Israel, with decades of governmental and judicial attempts to settle the issue never reaching a stable resolution. The Haredi religious and political leadership fiercely resists and protests any effort to draft young men.
Many ultra-Orthodox Jews believe that military service is incompatible with their way of life, and fear that those who enlist will be secularized, with anti-enlistment protesters frequently yelling that they “will die and not enlist.”
Israelis who do serve, however, say the decades-long arrangement of mass exemptions unfairly burdens them, a sentiment that has strengthened since the October 7 Hamas attack and the ensuing war, in which hundreds of soldiers have been killed and over 300,000 citizens were called up to reserve duty.
