‘National disgrace’: Hawkish politicians blast Haredi draft-exemption bill as capitulation

Opposition parties decry Likud MK Boaz Bismuth’s proposed bill to regulate ultra-Orthodox conscription as a capitulation to draft-dodgers.

The hawkish Yisrael Beytenu party, led by Avigdor Liberman, says: “The real right doesn’t support the evasion law.”

Former IDF chief of staff and MK Gadi Eisenkot, who now leads his own party, begins with a verse from the Bible: “Your brothers will go to war and you will stay here?” then continues: “The proposed evasion law by Bismuth-Attias is a national disgrace.”

“Instead of strengthening the IDF in a difficult time, the law proposes to distance Haredim from military service and to distinguish between blood and blood. This is a government that has lost its connection to the nation of Israel and legitimacy in the eyes of its voters. A government that supports a law unworthy of Israel’s citizens, our fighters, and our fallen.”

Likud MK Yuli Edelstein, who lost his post as chair of the Knesset defense panel over his refusal to back a text enshrining Haredi men’s exemptions from army service, joins the chorus.

He says: “Unlike the text I put forward, this proposed law does not answer the IDF’s needs, in any way. It’s another political Band-Aid instead of a historic law. We won’t give up. We will fight until the end for a real draft law.”