Ashkenazi: Like athletes, only top Torah scholars should be exempt from draft

In recordings aired by the Kan public broadcaster on Monday, the fourth candidate on the centrist Blue and White party’s slate, former chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi, said military draft exemptions for ultra-Orthodox community should be like those for athletes, only the very best of whom do not have to serve in the IDF.

“We have a model in which outstanding athletes are given exemptions and everyone else owes service,” Ashkenazi said in remarks delivered to a conference on equality in public service in Israeli society. “Everyone else will go to the induction center.”

He added, “I think this is dangerous for Israeli society — a reality in which a small number of young people serve the country as opposed to a growing public that does not serve.”

Many in the ultra-Orthodox community shun the military service that is mandatory for other Jewish Israelis, and the community has historically enjoyed blanket exemptions from the army in favor of religious seminary studies.

Shas head Aryeh Deri responded to Ashkenazi’s statements, saying: “I hope it will remain in the realm of ideas.”

“I do not know what [Blue and White leader Benny] Gantz’s intentions are, but in doing so they adopted the platform of Yesh Atid, and I have no doubt that even after the elections it will be Yesh Atid that leads and Lapid will be the leader in matters of religion and state,” Deri said, referring to Blue and White number two Yair Lapid, who merged his Yesh Atid party with Gantz’s slate.

Yesh Atid has historically advocated military and national service for Haredi youth and injecting a modern curriculum in traditionalist ultra-Orthodox schools.

The Israel Democracy Institute said last December that full-time yeshiva enrollment has increased among the fervently Orthodox Haredim, rates of employment have slowed, and fewer members of the community are enrolling in secular higher education.

According to the IDI, as of last year there were 114,000 Haredi men in full-time religious study, a rise of 21 percent over three years ago and a reversal of the previous trend of growing workplace participation.

While just under half of Haredi men are unemployed (while 73% of Haredi women work), that represents a significant rise over 2003, when only 36% of Haredi men and 51% of Haredi women held down jobs.

There have been several large protests against the draft by an extremist sect known as the Jerusalem Faction, blocking traffic in Jerusalem and elsewhere in recent years.

In 2017, the court ruled that a 2015 version of Israel’s draft law granting most yeshiva students exemptions from service was unconstitutional, telling lawmakers they must pass new guidelines for ultra-Orthodox enlistment. In 2018 the court granted the government a further month and a half to pass the bill, extending an early December deadline to mid-January, but the Knesset was then dissolved and elections set for April 9.

The Defense Ministry-drafted bill, the proposal on the table before elections were called, would set minimum yearly targets for ultra-Orthodox conscription that, if not met, would trigger financial sanctions on the yeshivas where the students study. At the same time, it would also formalize exemptions for the vast majority of yeshiva students.

Many view the proposal as the best possible deal for the ultra-Orthodox, and some in the community have warned that rejecting it will lead to chaos and mass conscription.

Without the extension, thousands of yeshiva students would have become eligible to be drafted.

According to a government report issued in 2017, Israel’s population will double in about 40 years. Some 29 percent — or 5.25 million of its projected 18 million residents — will be ultra-Orthodox Jews.

Ashekanzi also addressed the new batch of leaked recordings aired by Channel 13 on Sunday night in which leader Benny Gantz said he is “not sure” about a single member of his party’s senior leadership.

“There is no problem between us, you are invited to meetings of the quartet,” he told Army Radio, referring to himself, Gantz, Lapid and Moshe Ya’alon.

Agencies contributed to this report.