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Thursday, July 24, 2025
Haredi political leader says ultra-Orthodox will up and leave if draft dodgers arrested
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"
United Torah Judaism chairman Yitzhak Goldknopf declares that Israel’s Haredi population will leave the country en masse if authorities start arresting yeshiva students who refuse to report for military enlistment.
“If there is no choice and the ultra-Orthodox have to leave the country, then they will leave the country. There will be a state without ultra-Orthodox. The ultra-Orthodox will not change their way of life because there is an army and a war. There is an army, and there are also those who will go to the army. If you say you are short 50,000 soldiers, take these draft dodgers… there are 100,000 draft dodgers in Tel Aviv and Gush Dan,” the Haredi politician tells the national religious Makor Rishon newspaper.
Asked about others having to pay a price for the ultra-Orthodox refusal to serve, including religious people losing their lives or others being forced to miss religious observances due to manpower shortages, Goldknopf states that it is not his or his community’s concern.
“Don’t bring me your pains and pass it on to me. Let’s decide that everybody has their own burden,” he says.
Goldknopf’s comments come a day after mass Haredi protests in the wake of the arrest of three Haredi draft dodgers.
At the same time as the protests, members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud faction voted to replace MK Yuli Edelstein as chairman of the powerful Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee over his refusal to advance a conscription bill based on a compromise reached with the Haredi parties last month, under which most ultra-Orthodox males would continue to avoid IDF or other national service.
The senior Haredi politician’s rhetoric echoes that of former chief Sephardic rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, who in May warned that if the government arrests yeshiva students for dodging the draft, then the ultra-Orthodox community will be forced to leave Israel for some unspecified alternate country.
Responding to Goldknopf, Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman tweets that “the time has come to end the rule of the evaders.”
The Times of Israel Community.