Increasing Haredi IDF enlistment requires strong sanctions, Finance Ministry tells MKs
Budget official says conscription effort will only work if those who refuse to serve feel a real pinch in their pocket; Yesh Atid MK Moshe Tur-Paz: Economic sanctions needed now
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"
Conscripting large numbers of ultra-Orthodox Israelis for military service depends on the implementation of hard-hitting, long-term sanctions on draft dodgers, the Finance Ministry told lawmakers in a position paper last Thursday.
In a letter sent to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Yogev Gardos, the head of the ministry’s budget department, argued that sanctions would only be effective if they have a significant impact on household income, continue “over a long period of time,” and cannot be bypassed through alternative funding channels.
According to Gardos, benefits that could be cut under a sanctions regime for draft dodgers include daycare subsidies, yeshiva stipends, discounts on National Insurance Institute payments, housing subsidies, and property tax discounts.
Cutting these benefits would be ineffective if the sanctions are limited in duration, however, and should be applied over “a significant period of time,” he stated. “Accordingly, we believe that if an expiration age is set for[an individual to become exempt from these] economic sanctions, it must be an older age that ensures a long period of application.”
Even if both of these points were implemented, any penalties imposed for evasion would continue to fail to achieve their goal if the government is allowed to set up “alternative financing channels that would allow the circumvention of economic sanctions,” he continued.
This includes, for example, changing the criteria for eligibility for daycare subsidies, which the ultra-Orthodox parties in the coalition attempted (and failed) to do last November.
Sanctions should also be personal and tied directly to the actions of an individual rather than being linked to the collective failure to meet enlistment targets, Gardos added, asserting that to do otherwise would undercut any incentive to enlist.
Speaking with The Times of Israel, committee member MK Moshe Tur-Paz (Yesh Atid) said that the ministry’s letter said “something very simple: Without immediate economic sanctions that reduce the budget for yeshiva students now and over time there will be no Haredi recruitment.”
“This will continue to cost the State of Israel a lot of money that it does not have, and of course harm social cohesion and the IDF. Therefore, in my opinion, the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee should take the principles that the Budget Division talked about and implement them,” he said.
The Finance Ministry made the same points in a 16-page opinion sent to the Defense Ministry in December and an internal position paper circulated several days later.
The internal document argued that a controversial Haredi conscription bill being debated in the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee would “result in far-reaching negative economic effects” for the country, as it did not go far enough.
Citing defense establishment estimates, the Finance Ministry’s budget division stated that “the current security needs place a heavy burden” on reservists, requiring hundreds of thousands of them to serve up to 60 days and costing around NIS 30 billion ($8.2 billion) annually.
Defense Minister Israel Katz has proposed gradually increasing the number of Haredim drafted into the military until it hits 50 percent of the annual eligible Haredi draft cohort in 2032.
Addressing a conference on ultra-Orthodox enlistment last week, Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Yuli Edelstein (Likud) called for both personal sanctions and sanctions against Haredi institutions if recruitment targets are not met.
“No one will come to you with handcuffs, but state benefits will go to people who contributed” to the needs of national security, he said. “No one intends to take away basic things from people, [like] child benefits or social security or things like that, but the state gives a lot of discounts and benefits and subsidies in all kinds of areas.”
Testifying before the committee last month, Brig. Gen. Shay Tayeb, head of the IDF Personnel Directorate’s Planning and Personnel Management Division, said that the current legal penalties for failing to comply with enlistment orders were “not strong enough” and needed to be strengthened.
“In practice, those who violate the law may encounter sanctions only if they leave the country or are arrested by the police. To make sanctions more effective, they must be tied to the individual’s daily life,” he stated.
