From the Liveblog of
Thursday, December 11, 2025
Shas MKs visit draft dodgers in prison, declare support for legislation exempting yeshiva students from 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"
For the second time in just over a week, lawmakers belonging to the ultra-Orthodox Shas party visit yeshiva students held in military prison for draft dodging.
Acting on behalf of party chairman Aryeh Deri, MKs Yoav Ben-Tzur and Uriel Buso update the yeshiva students on their party’s efforts “to secure their release and to advance legislation in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee to regulate their status,” Shas says in a statement.
“In the Jewish state, yeshiva students will not be arrested for studying Torah. The Shas movement, led by the Council of Torah Sages and the party chairman Rabbi Aryeh Deri, stands as a wall for the yeshiva students and works with all its strength to fortify and strengthen the Torah world even in these difficult days,” Ben-Tzur and Buso state. “We will not rest, and we will not be silent until the status of Torah students is regulated by law.”
Last week, fellow Shas MKs Moshe Abutbul and Yonatan Mashriki also visited draft dodgers in prison, informing them that their Sephardi ultra-Orthodox faction was working “to immediately advance the law that will regulate the status of yeshiva students” and allow them to return to their studies.
Some 80,000 ultra-Orthodox men aged between 18 and 24 are currently believed to be eligible for military service, but have not enlisted. The IDF has said it urgently needs 12,000 recruits due to the strain on standing and reserve forces caused by the war against Hamas in Gaza and other military challenges. The IDF has arrested multiple draft dodgers in recent months as part of an effort at enforcement.
The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee is currently debating a controversial government-backed bill to regulate the conscription of ultra-Orthodox Jews. The legislation, as currently laid out, would continue to grant military service exemptions to full-time yeshiva students while purportedly increasing conscription among graduates of Haredi educational institutions.
However, the bill would also remove various provisions from a previous version of the bill that were intended to ensure that those registered for yeshiva study are actually studying, and would cancel all sanctions on draft evaders when they turn 26.
The bill is supported by Shas, while the United Torah Judaism party’s Degel HaTorah and Agudat Yisrael factions are split. Some members of the coalition, including within Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, have come out against the bill, which has been dismissed as an “evasion law” by critics.
The Times of Israel Community.