AG: Over 67,000 Haredi men are dodging draft, High Court must weigh more sanctions
In update to court, Baharav-Miara says Haredi draft is up year over year, but still well below IDF enlistment targets; blames 'absence of a coherent government policy' on issue
There are 67,230 ultra-Orthodox men currently defined as draft dodgers or who have refused to report to IDF enlistment offices after receiving conscription orders, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara said Wednesday in an update to the High Court of Justice on the implementation of court rulings on the issue.
In total, there are 110,000 draft dodgers, or people who have failed to report. The attorney general said that along with 67,230 ultra-Orthodox men, another 21 percent of the total figure were also from the ultra-Orthodox community, although her update did not explain why they were not included in the first group of 67,230.
Another 19% of draft dodgers are from the non-Haredi public, she said. The figures relate to the period up to September 8.
The attorney general noted that while 2,811 men from the Haredi community enlisted in the 2024 enlistment year (ending in June 2025), 4,298 Haredi men enlisted in the 2025 enlistment year (ending in June 2026), an increase of 65%.
Baharav-Miara said that the professional assessment is that this rise was due to the expansion of IDF tracks for Haredi men and increased enforcement. But she said it is far from fulfilling the army’s needs for more manpower.
“Enforcement efforts across various fields are far from being fully exhausted, both in the realm of criminal enforcement and due to the absence of a coherent government policy regarding the revocation of benefits for draft-eligible individuals who fail to enlist,” wrote the attorney general.
Baharav-Miara said, therefore, that the court should consider issuing additional operative orders to what it has already issued, including ordering the revocation of state benefits which could be conditioned on complying with conscription orders.
Earlier this week, 42 ultra-Orthodox draft dodgers were arrested at Ben Gurion International Airport in an elaborate Military Police operation designed to catch them upon their return to Israel from the United States.
That operation was condemned by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “deliberate attempt to harm the process of drafting Haredim without coercion,” and claimed that his coalition had been “on the verge of passing a real draft law, and were short by just one vote.” It was unclear what he was referring to, as there is no known case of a single vote preventing the passage of a draft bill.
Netanyahu’s coalition made highly controversial attempts to pass legislation that would enshrine the exemptions of the vast majority of Haredi yeshiva students from military service, an effort that was necessary to appease his ultra-Orthodox coalition partners but was highly unpopular within much of his own base.
The bill eventually drafted was widely seen as legally problematic and loophole-laden, and generated intense resistance even among members of Netanyahu’s coalition. Eventually, the premier informed the Haredim in the spring that he did not have the votes to pass it.
The issue of Haredi non-enlistment has remained a major source of political and social tension, as the IDF has repeatedly noted its manpower deficit amid the multifront war, and resentment has grown among Israelis who perform mandatory and reserve service, many of whom have served hundreds of days in the last three years.
The ultra-Orthodox community has historically shunned army service, claiming that military life is at odds with their religious culture and practices. The IDF has created programs to accommodate Haredi soldiers, but many still oppose service, and the community’s leaders seek legislation to continue broad exemptions that have been granted for decades. Haredi protest rallies against the draft and the arrest of draft evaders, which sometimes turn violent, have been routinely held at various locations around the country.
The High Court of Justice has repeatedly pressed the government to enforce Haredi enlistment after its 2024 ruling that there was no legal basis for blanket exemptions for yeshiva students. In July, the court froze legislation passed by the coalition that would have barred the arrest of Haredi draft dodgers for seven months.