Ex-chief rabbi on Haredi draft: ‘Even those who are idle are forbidden to go to the army’

Former Sephardi chief rabbi Yitzhak Yosef says that even Haredi men who are not studying in yeshiva should not be drafted into the Israel Defense Forces.

“It is forbidden to go to the army, even for one who is idle,” says Yosef, a top figure in the coalition’s Haredi Shas party.

The senior religious authority double-checks to be sure that his statement has been recorded.

In response, Likud MK Moshe Saada calls for Yosef to be probed.

“Anyone who breaks the law and calls for people not to enlist should be investigated,” Saada tells Army Radio.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ultra-Orthodox coalition partners have pushed for the passage of a law regulating military exemptions for yeshiva students and other members of the Haredi community, after the High Court ruled in June that the dispensations, in place for decades, were illegal.

Most Israelis outside the community want to scrap the broad Haredi exemptions from IDF service.

The Haredi religious and political leadership fiercely resists any effort to draft young men.

Israelis who do serve, however, say the decades-long arrangement of mass exemptions unfairly burdens them and their families, a sentiment that has intensified since the October 7, 2023, Hamas onslaught and the ensuing war, in which more than 780 soldiers have been killed and some 300,000 citizens have been called up to reserve duty.

The military has said that it currently requires some 10,000 new soldiers — 75 percent of whom would be combat troops — amid Israel’s multi-front war.