From the Liveblog of
Monday, March 10, 2025
IDF to send out 14,000 more draft orders to Haredi men, but says it won’t meet ultra-Orthodox recruitment goal
Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent
Speaking to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, a senior IDF officer in charge of encouraging ultra-Orthodox enlistment says that the IDF will soon be sending out an additional 14,000 draft orders to members of the Haredi community.
However, when asked if the IDF will reach its goal of 4,800 Haredi recruits with the next wave of draft orders, Lt. Col. Avigdor Dickstein says “no.”
Dickstein tells the committee that on March 13, a first wave of 5,000 draft orders will be sent out; on April 6 there will be another wave of 4,000; and on May 4 there will be a third wave of 5,000.
Among the 14,000, 9,100 will be randomly sent to Haredim who are eligible for military service, while the other 4,900 will be sent to those the IDF assumes will actually show up at the induction center. They include those who are working, who are students of higher education, or who hold driver’s licenses — indicators that they are not in full-time yeshiva learning.
This past year, some 70,000 Haredi males were listed as eligible for military service.
The orders, which constitute the first stage in the screening and evaluation process that the army carries out for recruits ahead of enlistment in the military in the coming year, come after a landmark High Court ruling in June 2024 that said there was no longer any legal framework allowing the state to refrain from drafting Haredi yeshiva students into military service.
The military has said that it currently requires some 12,000 new soldiers — 75% of whom will be combat troops.
Between July 2024 and this month, the IDF sent out 10,000 initial draft orders to members of the Haredi community in several waves. So far, only 177 of them have enlisted in the military.
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