80% of all draft evaders are ultra-Orthodox, IDF general tells Knesset

By Sam Sokol 27 January 2026, 7:41 pm

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Sam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. 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"

Haredi men block the road outside the IDF recruitment center in Jerusalem on November 12, 2025. (Sam Sokol/Times of Israel)

Nearly 80 percent of Israelis currently classified as draft evaders hail from the ultra-Orthodox community, Brig. Gen. Shay Tayeb, head of the IDF Personnel Directorate’s Planning and Personnel Management Division, tells the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

According to Tayeb, 49% of those designated as draft evaders or who have received an order known as tzav 12 for not showing up when ordered, are Haredi, while around 25-30% more, in cases which there is no definitive identification, are “likely Haredi” based on indications such as educational background and other factions.

Tayeb says that the total number of people who have either been designated as evaders or have received a tzav 12 stands at 68,000, a significant increase over the 13,000 on record only two years ago.

“The trend is clear; the numbers have grown at dramatic rates. Most entries into this group of evaders and ‘order 12’ cases are naturally occurring due to the [draft] orders, the lack of a law, and the absence of deferments. It appears they are from the ultra-Orthodox public,” he says.

The IDF has sent out tens of thousands of enlistment orders to previously exempt Haredim since 2024, when the High Court of Justice ruled that the decades-long blanket exemptions from army duty traditionally afforded to full-time Haredi yeshiva students were illegal.

“What’s amazing about this fact is that 80 percent of them are Haredi and this percentage is only growing all the time, both in numbers and percentages,” committee member Moshe Tur-Paz (Yesh Atid) tells The Times of Israel. “It’s three to four times the relative share in the population, so it’s a huge percentage, of course. And contrary to [the spin] they tried to present in the past weeks here, the facts are very clear to the general public.”