Lapid slams Haredi draft bill as ‘surrender to draft evasion and refusal’

Opposition leader Yair Lapid rails against the government’s plan to lower the age at which members of the ultra-Orthodox community can get a formal exemption from military service.

The proposal would lower the age of final exemption from the army from the current 26 to 23 or 21. While soldiers are generally drafted from age 18, many yeshiva students are thought to remain in religious study programs longer than they normally would in order to dodge the draft by claiming academic deferments until they reach the age of final exemption. By lowering the permanent exemption age, the government hopes to spur those Haredi men to leave the yeshiva and enter the workforce at a younger age.

“The [proposed] draft law pushed by the government has one meaning — the end of the people’s army,” Lapid says in a video statement, referring to the ethos of the Israel Defense Forces as an army that represents the nation, with compulsory service for all 18-year-olds.

“Only our children will enlist in the army,” he says, apparently referring to the non-Haredi public. “Only our kids will endanger their lives. Those who don’t enlist will get their stipends raised, and only our children will have to be the suckers who work and pay taxes.

“This isn’t a draft law, it’s a complete surrender to draft evasion and refusal. It’s a renunciation of the values upon which the State of Israel was founded.”