Liberman files police complaint against ex-chief rabbi for encouraging draft dodging
Yisrael Beytenu party head accuses former Sephardic chief rabbi Yitzhak Yosef and other leading rabbis of violating the law by urging yeshiva students to ignore enlistment orders
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"
Yisrael Beytenu party chairman Avigdor Liberman has filed a police complaint against former Sephardic chief rabbi Yitzhak Yosef and other senior ultra-Orthodox leaders who have publicly called on yeshiva students to ignore IDF enlistment orders in apparent violation of the law.
In response to a question by The Times of Israel, Liberman stated Monday that he had twice turned to the Attorney General’s Office and the Israel Police with a request to enforce the law against senior rabbis, but had not yet heard back.
“If there is no response to the second letter, then we will turn to the High Court of Justice,” he declared during a press conference before his party’s weekly faction meeting in the Knesset.
Under Israeli law, someone inciting others to evade military service during wartime is liable for a prison term of 15 years.
In a letter sent in April to Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, Defense Minister Israel Katz, Justice Minister Yariv Levin and senior police officials, Liberman’s attorneys called for the authorities to enforce the law against both Yosef and Rabbi Dov Lando, the chairman of the Degel HaTorah party’s ruling Council of Torah Sages, among other leading Haredi rabbis.
Since the High Court of Justice’s ruling ending yeshiva students’ service exemptions in June last year, multiple leading rabbis have actively discouraged their followers from complying with draft orders — both through public statements and via multiple initiatives aimed at guiding the Haredi public through their new post-exemption reality.
Lando, the 94-year-old spiritual leader of the non-Hasidic, so-called Lithuanian stream of ultra-Orthodoxy, has publicly called on yeshiva students to ignore IDF conscription orders, writing that they “should not report to the recruiting office at all” after receiving summonses.
Lando is also linked to the Vaad HaYeshivot (Yeshiva Committee) and the “Lema’ancha” (For Your Sake) organization, both of which run hotlines that actively encourage yeshiva students to defy conscription orders.
Yosef has similarly instructed yeshiva students to tear up and flush such orders down the toilet. He also recently warned that if the government arrests yeshiva students for dodging the draft, then the ultra-Orthodox community will be forced to leave Israel.
While rabbinic encouragement of evasion “is a serious offense” that “directly harms the security of Israel,” the authorities appear to “not see fit to prevent it,” Liberman’s letter asserted — adding that failure to enforce the law has created “a group of public leaders who enjoy protection from the threat of criminal law despite the fact that their blatant activity harms the majority of the Israeli public.”
In addition, a spokesperson for Liberman sent The Times of Israel a copy of a police document dated May 7, 2025, confirming that the police had received a criminal complaint on the matter.
Asserting that “the proof here is very simple,” Liberman told The Times of Israel on Monday that he was “surprised that the Justice Ministry, the Israel Police and the Israel Defense Forces are not acting in accordance with the law.”
“You cannot say that you are lacking 10,000 soldiers and not exercise any enforcement on the issue of deserters and evaders,” he added.
The army has stated that it is facing a manpower shortage and currently needs some 12,000 new soldiers — 7,000 of whom would be combat troops.
Currently, approximately 80,000 Haredi men between the ages of 18 and 24 are eligible for military service and have not enlisted. Between July 2024 and April 2025, the IDF sent out 18,915 initial draft orders to members of the Haredi community, but only 232 of those who had received orders have enlisted.
Unequal enforcement
While Liberman accused law enforcement of failing to crack down on those encouraging evasion, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid this week threatened to turn to the High Court of Justice over what he described as the government’s failure to enforce the law against the draft dodgers themselves.
Writing to Defense Minister Katz on Sunday, Lapid claimed that the IDF had “refrained from enforcing the conscription orders issued to young Haredi men” due to alleged “personal and illegal involvement of political figures who interfered in the work of the military police.”
Last week, the IDF announced that it had launched a “routine” Military Police campaign to detain people who ignored enlistment orders, sparking threats by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ultra-Orthodox partners to bolt the coalition. However, it does not appear that any arrests of Haredim were made during the operation.
In his letter, Lapid demanded detailed information on the number of Haredi dodgers, how many of them had been arrested, how the IDF is enforcing its conscription orders to Haredim and if Katz or any other political actors had intervened in said enforcement.
Unless Katz can answer his questions and show that there is no selective enforcement, Lapid wrote, he will turn to the High Court to deal with the issue.
Asked about his own threat to file a criminal complaint against hotlines encouraging evasion, Lapid on Monday replied that he had not yet done so but that his timeline for taking such action was “very short.”
“We are still following this [issue] and we don’t have the answers yet from the authorities and until we get them we are unable to operate but we will [do so] because the idea that… within the coalition there are people that decided that the law has nothing to do with them is unbearable to anyone,” Lapid stated during his party’s weekly faction meeting in the Knesset.
Asked earlier this month by The Times of Israel about the growing number of groups (including one linked to Jerusalem Affairs Minister Meir Porush) running hotlines counseling Haredi callers on how to respond to enlistment orders, Lapid responded that unless the Attorney General’s Office took action shortly, his party would turn to the police.
Yesh Atid MK Vladimir Beliak submitted a query on the matter to the Attorney General’s Office in mid-February, “and we expect swift and decisive action from the attorney general and the legal system,” Lapid stated at the time. “Otherwise, Yesh Atid will file a complaint with the police. On the face of it, these are criminal offenses, and the people who commit them should be treated as criminal offenders.”
The Israel Police and the attorney general appear to have failed to crack down on such groups, despite demands for investigation by advocacy groups and lawmakers. Under the law, someone inciting others to evade service during wartime is liable for a prison term of 15 years.
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