From the Liveblog of
Thursday, December 11, 2025
Eisenkot warns Netanyahu Haredi draft bill ‘dangerous’ for Israel, won’t strengthen IDF
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"
Writing to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and members of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Yashar party chairman Gadi Eisenkot warns that the purpose of the coalition’s proposed bill regulating ultra-Orthodox military service is “not to strengthen the IDF, but you decided to pass it at any cost” anyway.
The law is “dangerous for the security of the State of Israel” and “dismantles the framework of the people’s army,” argues the former IDF chief of staff, who previously served as an observer in Netanyahu’s now-defunct war cabinet.
“As a military man for most of my life, as chief of the general staff under your government, and someone who has sat at the crossroads of security decision-making for years, I am stating unequivocally that the conscription law currently under discussion in the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee harms the ID’s exclusive mission: defending the State of Israel, ensuring its existence, and victory in war,” he continues, arguing that “we cannot correct a historical mistake with another historical mistake, which is unlikely to be correctable, and which will be a source of grief for generations.”
Eisenkot describes his letter as a “serious strategic warning for Israel’s security and the values of Israeli society, similar to the one I sent you in August 2023, almost two months before the failure of October 7.”
In late 2023, Eisenkot warned that the government’s judicial overhaul and the reservist protests against it would have a negative impact on the IDF.
The Times of Israel Community.