IDF won’t meet 2024-2025 Haredi conscription targets, official tells Knesset defense committee

Despite aiming to recruit 4,800 Haredi men during the 2024-2025 draft cycle, only 1,721 have enlisted thus far, Lt. Col. Avigdor Dickstein, head of the Haredi branch of the IDF’s Personnel Directorate, tells the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

“We set ourselves a target of 4,800 and we will not reach that. There is an upward trend here, but it is not sufficient and does not correspond to the very large operational need,” he says.

Out of 18,915 Haredi men issued conscription orders during the current enlistment cycle, only 232 have joined the army, 57 of them in combat roles.

According to Dickstein, 1,840 of those recruits ignored initial draft orders and received an immediate call-up order that, if ignored, makes them draft evaders.

The consequences of being declared a draft evader include receiving a “no exit order” — being barred from leaving the country — and, during any encounter with the police, the draft dodger can be arrested.

So far, 962 have been declared draft evaders, Dickstein said, while another 68 received exemptions for various reasons.

Since January, 340 people eligible for enlistment have been held up at Ben Gurion Airport, 322 of them while attempting to exit the country. Of that number, 100 people, half of them Haredi, were prevented from leaving.

“Currently, the most significant and effective sanction is Ben Gurion Airport; there is currently no other sanction,” Dickstein states. “There is the ability to make arrests, but it is extremely ineffective. If I grab him and put him in a police car, will he end up enlisting?”