Likud casts religious Zionist critics of Haredi draft bill as left-wing agitators

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party this week accused religious Zionist organizations opposed to the coalition’s bill exempting ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students from military service of serving as a front for left-wing activists looking to bring down the government.

In a post on X on Tuesday, the party shared a segment from the pro-government Channel 14 purporting to tie leading members of the Partnership for Service — an organization composed of religious Zionist women married to reservists, which advocates for Haredi conscription and opposes the exemption bill — to the religious left and the anti-government protest movement.

The network, often accused of serving as a mouthpiece for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, played up Partnership for Service members’ opposition to the government’s judicial overhaul, involvement in Arab-Jewish coexistence efforts, and ties to politicians such as Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and former prime minister Naftali Bennett to delegitimize its efforts.

Bennett is a longtime right-wing rival of Netanyahu and is considered his most credible threat in this year’s election. Sa’ar, originally from Netanyahu’s party, was sidelined by the premier and became a fierce critic, before changing course in 2024, returning to Likud and mending ties with Netanyahu.

“The investigation proves beyond any doubt that the campaign of Partnership for Service against the draft law serves as cover for an incitement and division campaign by left-wing organizations inside the national camp, with one sole purpose – toppling the right-wing government and establishing a left-wing government together with the Arab parties,” Likud tweeted, promising to pass “a historic draft law that will lead to the enlistment of tens of thousands of Haredim” and ease the burden on Israel’s reservists.

On Thursday, in a closed meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Netanyahu reportedly said the law would pass “very soon,” along with a law that would extend mandatory service for Israelis who do enlist to 36 months, up from 32.

Haredi media quoted Netanyahu as praising the “fine work” of the committee chairman, Likud MK Boaz Bismuth, a key proponent of the legislation to exempt Haredi youth from military service.

For the past year, Netanyahu’s ultra-Orthodox coalition partners have pushed for a law keeping its constituency out of the Israel Defense Forces, after the High Court ruled that decades-long blanket exemptions from army duty traditionally afforded to full-time Haredi yeshiva students were illegal.

Critics of the current bill argue that it falls short of meeting the military’s needs. They also say it would perpetuate a structural disparity in Israeli society, in which Haredim avoid a draft that, for other Jewish Israelis, is mandatory.

Pointing to the high number of religious Zionist soldiers killed in the conflict sparked when Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, religious organizations such as Partnership for Service have sought to pressure the Religious Zionism party, which is part of the government, to oppose the legislation.

‘Crude silencing of critical voices’

The Channel 14 segment attacking Partnership for Service was far from the first time that the pro-government outlet attacked religious Zionist opponents of the controversial legislation, which would codify blanket exemptions from military service for full-time yeshiva students, while setting modest conscription targets for the community as a whole.

In December, the network claimed that funding for the religious Zionist campaign against the bill came from anti-government activists associated with the Kaplan protests against the judicial overhaul.

Following this week’s report, Partnership for Service’s Noa Mevorach was disinvited from a conference of national religious organizations in Eilat.

“They said we are controversial and that this is a religious education conference that is supposed to deal with positive things, and that it would create unpleasant situations of disagreement, so it was better that I not come,” Mevorach wrote on social media.

In a statement, Partnership for Service argued that “the crude silencing of critical voices through pressure and political bullying, simply because they do not fall in line with the draft law promoted by the government, is a disgrace and a shame.”

Ynet reporter Shiloh Fried, who had been slated to interview Mevorach on stage during the conference, also condemned the decision to exclude her, posting on X that it was “unacceptable and inappropriate.”

Bennett slammed Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, the chair of Religious Zionism, for his alleged links to the campaign against critics of the bill on Thursday afternoon.

Bennett accused Smotrich and Shas chairman Aryeh Deri of “fighting together to pass the evasion law and exerting enormous pressure on the MKs to betray our soldiers.”

In a lengthy post on X, Bennett alleged that this was “only part of the betrayal,” citing claims by reservist organizations that the far-right minister was running an influence operation in support of the bill by way of “the same advertising agency that Smotrich had recently worked with.”

“If Smotrich and his people are indeed behind this campaign (and he does not deny this) — it is a double injustice: both selling out the reservists to Deri, and also using public funds to defame those reservists and their wives, as happened now with the exclusion of Noa Mevorach from the religious Zionist conference in Eilat,” he said.

A spokesman for Smotrich did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Smotrich, a former political partner of Bennett, sparred with Shas this week, after the Haredi party on Wednesday blocked a vote splitting the annual Arrangements Law from a package of economic reforms being pushed by the finance minister as part of the state budget in order to protest the lack of speed at which the draft law is advancing.

Despite the significant, though not uniform, opposition to the bill within the party, Smotrich has rebuffed queries regarding his position, repeatedly telling reporters that Religious Zionism would only decide after the committee finishes its deliberations and presents a revised version.