Legal adviser: Knesset panel should pass Haredi conscription bill as ‘temporary measure’

Amid deep divides over the issue of ultra-Orthodox conscription, the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee’s legal adviser urged the panel on Sunday to pass an interim law regulating the issue.

If Haredi enlistment subsequently falls short of the IDF’s target numbers, Miri Frenkel Shor told lawmakers, the temporary law should lapse.

“I recommend that the committee enact the conscription law as a temporary measure and not as a permanent law. If the goals are not met, the law will expire,” she said as the committee began three days of back-to-back debates on the issue.

Testifying before the committee on Sunday, Brig. Gen. Shay Tayeb, head of the IDF Personnel Directorate’s Planning and Personnel Management Division, noted that while the number of Haredi recruits has increased recently, only 2,940 enlisted over the past year, far short of the IDF’s needs.

An average of around 1,800 Haredim enlist annually. Some 80,000 ultra-Orthodox men aged between 18 and 24 are currently believed to be eligible for military service, but have not enlisted. The Israel Defense Forces has said it urgently needs 12,000 recruits, due to the strain on standing and reserve forces amid the ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza and other military challenges.

Last year, the High Court ruled that longstanding blanket service exemptions for yeshiva students have no legal basis. Since then, the IDF has sent out tens of thousands of conscription orders — but a spike in enlistment has not ensued.

“The rate of conscription in relation to [the number of orders sent] is lower than before,” Tayeb said.

Ahead of Sunday’s discussion, i24 News released a clip of chairman Boaz Bismuth, a Likud lawmaker, telling a senior Haredi rabbi that members of the ultra-Orthodox community who study full-time in yeshiva ought to be allowed to continue their studies, while those who do not should be conscripted.

Declaring that “we must not have a religious war,” Bismuth insisted in the Thursday meeting that it was an “honor” to serve in the IDF but added “he who studies will [continue to] study” and will not be conscripted for military service. That policy, he said, provides a kind of “insurance” for the future of Judaism.

It is unclear how much of a change such an approach would make to enlistment rates. While significant numbers of Haredi men are not full-time students, many have traditionally been registered as such in yeshivas in order to avoid conscription.

Blue and White-National Unity MK Chili Tropper said that the practice of registering people as full-time students means that enlistment targets will not be met.

Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs, meanwhile, replied that immediate sanctions would be counterproductive. He believes sanctions would be more consequential if they were to come into effect after a year.

Sunday’s debate was the committee’s second on the issue since the Walla news site reported last week that Bismuth supported the approval of a wartime “emergency regulation,” which would allow for the immediate drafting of enough soldiers to fill the military’s manpower shortage while also lifting sanctions on ultra-Orthodox draft evaders.

Since taking over the committee in July, Bismuth has started from scratch on advancing ultra-Orthodox conscription legislation, prompting scathing criticism from opposition lawmakers as well as former committee chairman Yuli Edelstein, whose work on the issue has been scrapped.

According to Hebrew media reports, Bismuth met with Frenkel Shor and Shas lawmakers ahead of Sunday’s committee meeting, and is slated to meet with United Torah Judaism chairman Yitzhak Goldknopf on Wednesday, in an effort to come to an agreement on the text of a bill.

The impact of sanctions

Bismuth was appointed to head the committee in the wake of UTJ’s exit from the coalition, after it had been presented with a copy of a proposed enlistment bill prepared by Edelstein in July. UTJ argued that the proposed bill violated the terms of a supposed compromise reached the previous month. UTJ was quickly followed by Shas, which, while quitting the government, remained part of the coalition.

According to reports, the June compromise would have delayed the application of some sanctions and stipulated that the status of all yeshiva students would be reset and needed to be regulated from scratch, meaning that many of those who have received multiple draft orders and been declared draft evaders would no longer be subject to arrest.

However, the bill ultimately presented by Edelstein was significantly harsher, calling for the immediate application of sanctions on draft dodgers, including the revocation of drivers’ licenses and a ban on international travel.

According to a study released by the Israel Democracy Institute over the weekend, 48 percent of Haredim of conscription age have traveled abroad, rising to 71% among those who do not study in yeshiva. Those who travel abroad are more likely to work, belong to “modern” Haredi communities, or be the children of immigrants — all groups that are more likely to enlist.

“Among the Haredi public, reasons for leaving the country may be unique to their community and lifestyle—for example, pilgrimages to the gravesites of tzaddikim [the righteous], visits to Hasidic rebbes, [and] participation in seasonal employment markets such as cantorial services, kosher slaughter, and other religiously skilled occupations,” the think tank noted, adding that travel restrictions could also have an impact on matchmaking among members of multinational Hasidic sects.

Overall, restricting travel by Haredim “could have [a] significant impact” on the community, the study concluded.