From the Liveblog of
Thursday, November 27, 2025
Bismuth: Haredi draft-exemption bill is ‘balanced,’ aims ‘to stabilize the state’
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"
In a video message posted on social platform X, Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Boaz Bismuth pushes back against his critics, arguing that his revised bill regulating ultra-Orthodox conscription is good for both the Haredim and the IDF.
“We’re on our way, we’ve submitted the conscription bill, and with God’s help we will do and succeed. A balanced law, a good law, a law that is good for the army. A good law for yeshiva students, a law that is good for the people of Israel, that is good for the state itself,” he tweets. “And I have to tell you one thing: and let’s be precise: it’s not here to stabilize a coalition, it’s here to stabilize the state.”
Bismuth also retweets a post by another user arguing that submitting the controversial legislation was an achievement that his predecessor Yuli Edelstein had not managed to accomplish.
“Anyone who doesn’t understand that integrating the Haredim will only happen through agreement did not really want to change the decades-old DNA of the Haredi public, but was just looking for a fight. Bismuth succeeded where many failed,” the post reads.
The Times of Israel Community.