From the Liveblog of
Sunday, June 28, 2026
Defense minister calls for halt to arrests of draft dodgers
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleSam 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"
Defense Minister Israel Katz calls for a halt to draft evader arrests, pushing Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Boaz Bismuth to hold an “urgent hearing” on a proposal to end such enforcement.
In a letter, Katz tells Bismuth that, in light of Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs’s letter supporting a moratorium on arrests, his legislative panel should discuss a “temporary provision” that allows full-time yeshiva students to avoid arrest while ensuring “the continuation of criminal enforcement against draft-evaders from the Haredi public who are not studying in yeshivas.”
The proposal is one of two parallel bills being pushed by ultra-Orthodox lawmakers in the hopes of keeping yeshiva students out of the army despite the High Court of Justice’s 2024 ruling ordering the government to start conscripting Haredi men.
It is being advanced alongside the coalition’s controversial proposed Basic Law declaring Torah study a foundational value of the State of Israel.
Katz and Bismuth are both members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party.
The IDF has repeatedly said it urgently needs more recruits; 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 Times of Israel Community.