From the Liveblog of
Monday, December 30, 2024
Asked about high toll of fallen religious Zionist soldiers, Haredi MK says, ‘I see the price they are paying in leaving religion’
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"
United Torah Judaism MK Yitzhak Pindrus says that he cannot support mandatory military service for ultra-Orthodox Jews, even though his community’s failure to serve means he’s embarrassed to look national-religious Jews in the eye.
The national-religious community, unlike the ultra-Orthodox, does perform mandatory IDF service.
During a conference organized by the Israel Democracy Institute, the Haredi lawmaker is asked, “When you look at the vast rate of fallen soldiers from the religious Zionist [community], how can you explain… that it still does not prompt the community that you represent to come and say… we are coming to share the burden?”
He responds: “I can’t look the [religious-Zionst Jews] in the eye. But there is one thing that I also see. I see the price that they are paying in leaving religion. That’s the reason I’m not there. I see the price and they are paying a very heavy price.”
The Haredi religious and political leadership have fiercely resisted any effort to require members of the community to serve in the military. Their longstanding exemptions from the mandatory military draft were undercut in June when the High Court of Justice ruled there is no legal basis for these exemptions.
United Torah Judaism has been pushing hard for the passage of a government-backed bill aimed at enshrining the exemptions in law. The bill is currently stuck in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, whose chairman, Likud MK Yuli Edelstein, has said that the needs of the IDF must come first and that the panel will only advance the legislation if lawmakers can reach a “broad consensus” on the matter.
The Times of Israel Community.