Treasury officials said to issue formal opinion against Haredi draft exemption law

Treasury officials have issued a formal opinion against the proposed ultra-Orthodox draft exemption bill that the government is currently trying to pass into law, Channel 12 reports.

According to the report, the letter stresses that, given the ongoing war, sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught, the economy requires that a large number of ultra-Orthodox Israelis be drafted into the military.

The professionals’ letter was said to cite data showing that the annual cost of the stress on the IDF reserves is NIS 30 billion ($8 billion).

“The central goal is to ease the heavy burden of the reservists,” the Treasury officials are quoted as saying, noting that volunteering for “national service or ZAKA (search and rescue organization) does not ease the burden of military reserves service.

The opinion goes so far as to recommend that those who evade conscription should be personally sanctioned, according to Channel 12.

A bill that would “very slowly” increase the rate of ultra-Orthodox conscription is currently stuck in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, after a landmark High Court ruling in June that said there was no longer any legal framework allowing the state to refrain from drafting Haredi yeshiva students into the IDF.