Deri accuses IDF chief of election interference for opposing ban on arresting draft dodgers

Shas chairman Aryeh Deri lashed out at IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir on Thursday over his strong opposition to the coalition’s recently passed law freezing the arrest of ultra-Orthodox draft dodgers, accusing the military chief of trying “to help the left-wing bloc during an election campaign.”

The chair of the ultra-Orthodox party also criticized the High Court of Justice for freezing the new legislation the day after it passed, declaring that the country’s top court “no longer has authority over us.”

Before the law was passed on Tuesday, Zamir warned in a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Israel Katz, and Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chair Boaz Bismuth that the legislation was “clearly and unequivocally inconsistent with the IDF’s needs” and amounted to providing “mass exemptions from prosecution” for draft dodgers.

Some 72,000 ultra-Orthodox men aged 18 to 24 are currently believed to be eligible for military service, but have not enlisted, despite mounting calls for their conscription as Israel has fought wars on multiple fronts since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack, while facing a growing manpower shortage.

Speaking to the ultra-Orthodox Kikar HaShabbat news channel, Deri, who sits in the government’s key decision-making security cabinet, claimed on Thursday that Zamir had “lost it,” and was “preoccupied with attacks against him and with protecting his own reputation.”

The Shas chair argued that Zamir knows that arresting draft dodgers “won’t bring a single new recruit.”

“What the chief of staff did was try to help the left-wing bloc during an election campaign,” he claimed. “He is the army’s chief of staff. He must not engage in politics.”

Deri further insisted that Zamir had “set a very dangerous precedent” by coming out publicly against the legislation and had “caused great damage to the army.”

“He did not help the army,” he reiterated.

Deri’s assertion directly contradicts testimony the IDF gave to the Knesset last month, attributing part of the increase in Haredi enlistment — from roughly 1,800 recruits in 2024 to an estimated 3,500 over the past year — to stepped-up enforcement measures.

According to the military, roughly 60 percent of Haredi draft dodgers who are arrested ultimately enlist, and the prospect of being subject to arrest or other enforcement measures prompts many others to report voluntarily before it gets to that point.

Although only a few ultra-Orthodox draft evaders have actually been arrested, they have caused the ultra-Orthodox parties and the coalition a severe political headache, prompting the passage of new legislation freezing the arrests just days before the end of the current Knesset term.

The Haredi legislative push comes after the High Court ruled unanimously in 2024 that the government must draft ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students into the military since there was no legal framework to continue the decades-long practice of granting them blanket exemptions from army service.

The law, passed in a vote of 58-54 on Tuesday, grants tens of thousands of Haredi draft evaders immunity from arrest until late January 2027, and extends that protection to those who become eligible for military service after it takes effect, effectively eliminating the threat of arrest and making it easier to refuse to enlist during that period. It also suspends ongoing criminal proceedings against those already facing enforcement measures.

The High Court froze implementation of the law a day later, however, and scheduled a hearing on the matter for July 28.

In response to the court order freezing the law’s implementation, Deri told Kikar HaShabbat that he didn’t plan to obey to the judicial system anymore.

“We do not recognize its authority; it no longer has any authority over us,” he declared.

“What is there for us at the High Court? Why do we have to go and defend ourselves there, to play this game?”

IDF Spokesman Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin subsequently alluded to displeasure over Deri’s comments, in an appearance on Nadav Perry’s “All In” podcast, saying that some recent attacks by politicians against Zamir have been “cheap.”

“This is his job as chief of staff, to express his professional position in the name of the IDF,” Defrin said. “And then there is criticism, some of it relevant and some not relevant and significant.”

“When you criticize the chief of staff in an irrelevant manner, some of it being cheap in a certain way, you harm the entire army,” Defrin continued. “The chief of staff is not Eyal Zamir; he’s the chief of the general staff, he’s this establishment, and he represents the company commander, the battalion commander, the soldier in Golani, and the soldier in the tank, on the warship, and the pilot. This is the chief of staff; if you harm him, you harm them.”

Yashar party chair Gadi Eisenkot, himself a former IDF chief of staff, assailed Deri for his comments, calling them “a display of arrogance and detachment from reality.”

“There is nothing Jewish about sending only part of the people of Israel to fight a necessary war,” said Eisenkot, who is the leading opposition contender to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the upcoming elections. “There is no leadership in turning the IDF chief of staff into a tool in your dirty political game.”

Former prime minister Naftali Bennett, the head of the Together party, pointed out that “one moment, Deri is boasting about his draft-dodging grandchildren, and the next he attacks the IDF chief of staff, as though he bears no responsibility for the chaos and terrible rift in Israeli society.”

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid also pointed out the irony of Deri’s statement, saying the Shas leader “visited evaders in prison in the morning, hugged his draft dodging grandchildren in the afternoon, and from the cabinet at night he sent other people’s children to die in war.”

“The chief of staff only told the truth,” Lapid continued. “Because of Deri and his people, we don’t have enough soldiers. Deri is a danger to national security.”

Emanuel Fabian contributed to this report