Lapid urges coalition to work on a new, comprehensive law that will draft Haredim to IDF
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. 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"
Asserting that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “undermining national security,” Opposition Leader Yair Lapid calls on coalition lawmakers to work to “pass a real, effective conscription law, so that our fighters will know that the Knesset stands behind them.”
Addressing reporters ahead of his Yesh Atid party’s weekly faction meeting at the Knesset, Lapid decries the Netanyahu-backed “evasion and refusal law” — which lowers the age of exemption from mandatory service for Haredi yeshiva students — as “a betrayal of the fighters, a betrayal of the reservists, a betrayal of the Israeli middle class and a betrayal of the IDF.”
Tomorrow, the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee is set to debate the legislation, which aims to exempt yeshiva students from service at age 21 and “very slowly” increase the rate of their conscription.
“Since we met here last Monday, we are already at 16 dead who gave their lives for the country, and the kollel students are hiding in the tent of Torah,” he says.
Pushing back against those who say the ultra-Orthodox are not ready for military service, Lapid declares that “you don’t need any process of adaptation or adjustment. There is already such a process — it’s called basic training.”
Lapid also takes aim at a slogan used by some Haredim, “We will die and not enlist.” He says that “those who die every day are those who did enlist. Enlisting is what our children do.”
He urges, “This law should be finished in the current [legislative] session. Convene the committee five days a week from morning to evening. If the reservists can serve 150 days in a row, the committee can also.”
Asked about how he would handle Haredim who refuse to enlist, Lapid says there is no need to “send tanks to Bnei Brak,” but there are legal sanctions that can be applied.