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Sunday, September 21, 2025
Likud spokesman says bill exempting ultra-Orthodox from IDF draft long overdue
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleSam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. 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"
A bill regulating Haredi conscription “should have been passed a long time ago,” Likud spokesman Guy Levy tells ultra-Orthodox radio station Kol Berama, backing controversial legislation that would exempt yeshiva students from military service.
“I am among those who greatly revere the world of Torah; yeshivas must be given their place and status, and those Torah scholars who study should receive even more. On the other hand, I also greatly sanctify the army,” he says.
The controversial legislation, which critics have dubbed the “evasion bill,” is currently being debated in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. The committee’s chairman, Likud MK Boaz Bismuth, has insisted that Israelis must “find the balance” between tradition and Torah study, on the one hand, and military service, on the other, “to reach a historic solution.”
Earlier this month, i24 News released a clip of Bismuth telling a senior Haredi rabbi that members of the ultra-Orthodox community who study full-time in yeshiva ought to be allowed to continue their studies, while those who do not should be conscripted.
He has reportedly pushed for the approval of a wartime “emergency regulation” that would allow for the immediate drafting of enough soldiers to fill the military’s manpower shortage while also lifting sanctions on ultra-Orthodox draft evaders.
In a separate interview with Kol Berama, Rabbi Moshe Maya, a member of Shas’s ruling Council of Torah Sages, insists that yeshiva students not be conscripted at all, but he is open to discuss conscription for those not enrolled in yeshivas.
The Times of Israel Community.