UTJ’s Degel HaTorah faction says it will back latest version of IDF conscription bill

The United Torah Judaism party’s Degel HaTorah faction announces that it has received a “green light” from its senior spiritual leaders, rabbis Dov Lando and Moshe Hirsch, to support the advancement of the government’s bill regulating Haredi conscription in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee “as soon as possible.”

In a statement, the ultra-Orthodox faction says that according to the directive, “after the full bill is submitted, and before the vote in the Knesset, the proposal will be placed on the table of the great Torah leaders… where a final decision will be made regarding how to vote on the law.”

For the past year, the Haredi leadership has pushed to pass a law largely keeping its constituency out of the IDF, after the High Court ruled that decades-long blanket exemptions from army duty traditionally afforded to full-time Haredi yeshiva students were illegal.

Despite chairman Boaz Bismuth announcing in October that he would soon submit a revised draft of the bill to the committee, with the intention of bringing it to a final plenum vote in December, the legislation’s progress since then has been marked by repeated delays caused by ultra-Orthodox intransigence and internal opposition to the bill within the coalition.

Asked what developments had prompted Lando and Hirsch’s new instructions, a spokesman for Lando tells The Times of Israel that it was due to what he called “practical considerations for saving the world of Torah.”

“In the end, the great rabbis have two main considerations. The primary consideration is that those who want to learn can continue to study and the second is that those who enlist will have a suitable framework in the IDF. They will do what is needed to safeguard yeshiva students,” he says.

Several days ago, Bismuth appeared to confirm that his revised draft of the bill would continue to exempt full-time yeshiva students from IDF service for the foreseeable future.

Despite Degel HaTorah’s support, Agudat Yisrael, UTJ’s other faction, still opposes the bill. Fellow ultra-Orthodox party Shas is understood to support it, but internal divisions have kept the party from officially endorsing the legislation at this time.

Pushback against Haredi parties’ support for the bill has led to violence and protests against ultra-Orthodox MKs in recent days.