From the Liveblog of
Wednesday, January 22, 2025
Deputy AG: Draft law advanced by Katz doesn’t meet IDF’s needs, contravenes High Court ruling
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"
The principles of a draft law being advanced by Defense Minister Israel Katz fail to meet the manpower needs of the IDF, contravening the High Court of Justice’s ruling last summer that ultra-Orthodox men must no longer get an exemption from military service, Deputy Attorney General Gil Limon tells lawmakers.
“The High Court of Justice ruling is the legal starting point according to which we examine every proposal regarding conscription. It has three components: general conscription, an administrative obligation on the army to enforce it equitably, and a prohibition on the state providing funding” for draft dodgers, Limon tells the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
“The scope of conscription presented by the minister is lower than the army’s needs, and the rate of conscription also does not match the army’s needs in terms of force building,” Limon says.
In June, the court ruled that the government must draft ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students into the military since there was no longer any legal framework to continue the decades-long practice of granting them blanket exemptions from army service.
Katz’s barebones outline calls for gradually increasing the number of Haredim drafted into the military until it hits 50 percent of the annual eligible Haredi draft cohort in 2032.
