High Court orders state to clarify plans to draft Haredim, penalize dodgers
Instruction comes only days before Defense Minister Katz is slated to present his proposed enlistment plan to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. 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"
The High Court of Justice on Friday gave the state until the end of January to explain what steps it was taking to maximize Haredi enlistment to the Israel Defense Forces and to penalize draft dodgers.
The instruction came in response to several petitions calling for the immediate conscription of all previously exempt ultra-Orthodox men.
In its order, the court noted that the number of eligible Haredi men who have not been recruited to the armed forces stands at around 80,000, and said that the gap between the number of ultra-Orthodox recruits called up for service and those who actually enlist “raises concerns that the quota set for the current year will also not be met.”
In its response to the petitions, the state last week told the court that the IDF has the capacity to absorb 4,800 Haredim in the enlistment year ending this coming June, and around 5,700 in 2025. Starting in 2026, however, there will be no limit to the number of ultra-Orthodox servicemen the military will be able to accommodate.
Absorbing a large number of ultra-Orthodox soldiers will require significant efforts on the part of the IDF, including adjusting how soldiers are evaluated — with current Initial Psychotechnical Rating tests having been found unsuitable for Haredim.
While the IDF’s capacity is increasing, it has not yet managed to reach its recruitment targets, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara told the court in a filing, calling efforts to increase the number of Haredim in the military “an extraordinary practical, command and professional challenge.”
In its order, the High Court asked for details on the steps that will be taken to ensure Haredi men are drafted. It inquired as to the extent of preparations “for the use of various enforcement measures against candidates for conscription who do not report” when summoned.
The state has until January 30 to respond.
In a landmark ruling in June 2024, the High Court ruled unanimously that the government draft ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students into the military since there was no longer any legal framework to continue the decades-long practice of granting them blanket exemptions from army service.
Since then, thousands of orders have gone out but few Haredim have enlisted, with the overwhelming majority of those eligible for military service remaining out of the army.
The community’s leadership is vehemently opposed to young Haredi men serving in the military, fearing they will be secularized.
According to figures cited by state representatives in court on Wednesday and in the Knesset’s State Control Committee hearing on the matter on Tuesday, 3,000 enlistment orders were sent out from July to October 2024, but only some 400 recipients presented themselves at the IDF drafting offices and approximately 70 actually enlisted at the end of the process.
The low rate of enlistment angered the judges, with Justice Noam Sohlberg stating on Wednesday that he and his colleagues were “outraged that there are 85,000 Haredi men of military age who are not enlisting,” according to the Walla news site.
Justice Daphne Barak Erez, meanwhile, asked the state how it intended to draft 4,800 Haredi men “if enforcement measures are only taken half a year after the enlistment order is issued.”
According to Hebrew-language media reports, Defense Minister Israel Katz had tried to delay the filing of the state’s response because the IDF’s position that Haredi men could be recruited without limit contradicts the position adopted by the government, which is seeking to pass controversial legislation on the issue to appease Haredi coalition parties.
Katz is due to present his long-awaited proposal for ultra-Orthodox military conscription to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Tuesday.
According to a statement by committee chairman Yuli Edelstein’s spokesman, the minister’s proposed compromise bill will contain “principles for achieving the goal of a significant increase in the number of Haredim serving” in the IDF — as well as anchor in law the status of the full-time yeshiva students who will remain exempt from enlistment.
The government, at the behest of the ultra-Orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism parties, is attempting to pass a bill that would see some increased enlistment of Haredi men, but would broadly maintain the decades-long, wide-scale exemption of the community from military or national service.
However, legislation dealing with the issue is currently stuck in the committee, with Edelstein insisting that the needs of the IDF must come first and that the panel will only advance the legislation if lawmakers can reach “broad consensus” on the matter.
