205 out of 10,000: Just 2% of Haredi call-ups have enlisted since High Court struck down their exemptions

Only two percent of all the ultra-Orthodox men who have been called up for service since the High Court struck down their exemptions from military service last year have actually joined the Israeli army, a senior IDF official tell lawmakers.

The IDF sent out 10,000 initial draft orders to members of the Haredi community in several waves between July 2024 and March 2025.

Addressing the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Lt. Col. Avigdor Dickstein, head of the Haredi branch of the IDF’s Personnel Directorate, states that out of 10,000 people who have received conscription orders, just 205 actually enlisted.

Arrest warrants have been issued for 1,096 who ignored their second draft orders. The IDF Military Police does not plan to actually carry out arrests, but will instead wait until they are declared “draft evaders” by the IDF’s Personnel Directorate and leave it to law enforcement.

After receiving an arrest warrant, those recruits will receive an immediate call-up order, and if they ignore it, they will be declared as draft evaders. The consequences of being declared a draft evader include receiving a “no exit order” — barring recipients from leaving the country. In addition, such individuals can be arrested in any police encounter.

In total, 1,721 Haredim have joined the army since the beginning of the current recruitment cycle last year, according to Dickstein. Currently, approximately 66,000 Haredi men between the ages of 18 and 24 are eligible for military service but have not enlisted.

Addressing the committee, Rabbi Jeremy Stavistki, the former principal of Jerusalem’s Himmelfarb School, says that if the committee does not pass an enlistment law mandating sanctions on draft dodgers, “people will not refuse [to report for reserve duty], their wives simply will not let them come.”

“Who would let their husband leave for a third or fourth time? This would collapse the reserve system and we all know that without reservists, there is no army.”

The Himmelfarb High School is among the most prominent academies in Israel for religious Zionists, ten of whose graduates have fallen in the Gaza war. Stavistki’s own son-in-law, Sgt. First Class (res.) Yinon Fleishman, was killed in a tank accident on the northern border on October 29, 2023.

While Dickstein and Stavistki address the committee, hundreds of Israelis march outside the Knesset building, demanding universal enlistment in the IDF and calling for all citizens to share the burden of military service.