AG says government must up enforcement against draft evaders, 83% of whom are Haredim

Ultra-Orthodox Israelis comprise over 80 percent of all draft evaders in the country, the Attorney General’s Office said Tuesday, despite an increase in the number of ultra-Orthodox draftees enlisting in the IDF.

The office called for the state to strengthen its enforcement of draft orders, including by arresting draft evaders.

In a statement summarizing a discussion on the issue held by military, legal and police officials, the office of Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara said “the phenomenon of draft evasion is still widespread” even though increased enforcement, sanctions and the establishment of special service tracks geared toward Haredim have boosted conscription.

According to data released by Baharav-Miara’s office, around 50,000 of the 60,000 people who were declared by the IDF to be draft evaders last year were members of the ultra-Orthodox community, just over 83% of the total figure, despite Haredim comprising only around 14% of the population.

Despite the vast majority of those evading conscription being members of the community, the Attorney General’s Office noted that only 34 of the 348 indictments filed for draft dodging so far this year were against Haredim — just under 10% of the total.

“In order to continue reducing the phenomenon of draft evasion and respond to the urgent security need to grow the army, it is necessary to expand the basket of personal economic enforcement measures as soon as possible, and the army and police must also return to carrying out proactive operations and arrests against evasion from all segments of the population,” the statement from Baharav-Miara’s office added.

Responding to the statement, Moshe Gafni, a Haredi MK and chairman of the United Torah Judaism party’s Degel HaTorah faction, declared that the attorney general had no authority to impose restrictions on yeshiva students.

“Yeshiva students will continue to diligently study their Talmud, and nothing will stop them,” Gafni said.

“Not even an attorney general whom the government decided to remove from her position, and who continues to act on issues she has no authority to deal with,” Gafni said, referencing the unsuccessful efforts by the coalition to fire Baharav-Miara.

Gafni further declared that Baharav-Miara is “impudent, corrupt, and acts against the law.”

The Degel HaTorah faction is among the staunchest opponents of efforts to conscript Haredi men, and has spurred mass protests against enlistment.

In April, the High Court of Justice ordered the government to explain its failure to issue enough conscription orders to ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students to meet the needs of the IDF, and its failure to enforce the orders it had issued. The police subsequently announced in May that new orders had been issued to officers to detain draft dodgers and wait for the Military Police to pick them up.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party recently helped push through a pair of laws declaring Torah study a “foundational value” of the Jewish people and preventing arrests of Haredi draft evaders (the latter of which the High Court froze). Netanyahu later tried to distance himself from the effort to exempt yeshiva students from military conscription.