Haredi spiritual leaders: Those who arrest draft dodgers could face divine retribution

Rabbis of Shas, UTJ’s Degel HaTorah call on Military Police to refuse orders rather than commit the ‘terrible crime’ of arresting ultra-Orthodox men evading military service

By Sam Sokol 10 February 2026, 11:50 am

Edit

Sam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men block a road during a protest against the jailing of yeshiva students at the Gilat junction, near the southern Israeli city of Ofakim, February 9, 2026. (Tsafrir Abayov/Flash90)

Both the spiritual leaders of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party and the Degel HaTorah faction on Monday called on members of the Military Police to refuse orders to arrest draft-dodging yeshiva students, warning they could face divine repercussions and excommunication.

The comments came a day after police clashed with rioters in the southern town of Ofakim over the arrest of a Haredi draft dodger. Some 80,000 ultra-Orthodox men aged between 18 and 24 are currently eligible for military service, but have not enlisted. The IDF has said it urgently needs 12,000 recruits due to the strain on standing and reserve forces caused by the war.

Speaking with Haredi radio station Kol Barama, Rabbi Moshe Maya, a member of Shas’s ruling Council of Torah Sages, stated that “anyone who despises the scholars has no part in the world to come” and that there is “no greater dishonor of a scholar than arresting him and putting him in prison.”

He added that for anyone who “disgraces” a Haredi draft dodger by detaining him, Jewish law states that they should be excommunicated because of the shame they have caused.

Maya advised soldiers ordered to arrest evaders to ask their rabbis what to do if the IDF is “forcing [him] to transgress a Torah command.”

At the end of the day, if a soldier is ordered “to violate a Torah prohibition… it is forbidden to obey” the military command, he said.

Rabbi Moshe Maya leaves the venue of a meeting of the Shas Torah Sages Council in Jerusalem on February 20, 2019. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Shas lawmakers have visited draft evaders in military prison, often praising their “selfless dedication to the Torah.”

Meanwhile, the spiritual leader of Degel HaTorah, on of the two factions of the United Torah Judaism party, also lambasted members of the Military Police for arresting draft dodgers, telling them they could face divine justice.

Addressing a Monday gathering in Bnei Brak, Rabbi Dov Lando claimed that the arrest of yeshiva draft dodgers “shakes the heart of every Jew.”

He said that anyone complicit in this “terrible crime” should be aware that they could face divine judgment and that the Haredi community shares in the pain of those who have faced prison time for draft dodging.

“We pray with all our hearts that this evil will pass and dissipate like smoke,” he added.

Rabbi Dov Lando in Bnei Brak, August 21, 2025. (Sam Sokol/Times of Israel)

For the past year, the Haredi leadership has been pushing for the passage of a law that would largely keep its constituency out of the IDF, after the High Court ruled that decades-long blanket exemptions from army duty informally afforded to full-time Haredi yeshiva students were illegal.

The issue has come to the forefront with the upcoming vote on the budget dominated by debate over the contentious Haredi draft exemption bill.

There have been large weekly ultra-Orthodox protests against the drafting of the community’s members, blocking traffic and at times involving thousands of demonstrators.