Sanctions on draft dodgers need to be strengthened, top officer tells lawmakers
The IDF’s capacity to absorb ultra-Orthodox recruits is set to rise sharply in coming years, says Brig. Gen. Shay Tayeb, adding, ‘There will be tens of thousands… under orders’
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"
The IDF’s capacity to absorb ultra-Orthodox recruits is set to increase dramatically in the coming years, Brig. Gen. Shay Tayeb, head of the IDF Personnel Directorate’s Planning and Personnel Management Division, told lawmakers on Tuesday, but also called for stronger sanctions on draft dodgers.
Briefing the Knesset State Control Committee, Tayeb said that in the current recruitment year, which ends in June, the IDF has the capability to handle 4,800 Haredi recruits, a number that will then rise by 20% to 5,700 the following year. Assuming the IDF is provided with the necessary resources, it will be able to absorb Haredim “without any restrictions” after that.
Moreover, all eligible Israelis aged 16 from the current draft cohort will receive recruitment orders, with more than 10,000 outstanding call-up orders expected to be issued issued over the course of the coming year.
This appears to be in addition to the 3,000 draft notices sent to Haredi men aged 18-26 over the summer. An additional 7,000 orders were approved by Defense Minister Israel Katz in November.
The IDF later said that it had completed sending out the 7,000 draft orders.
The orders constitute the first stage in the screening and evaluation process that the army carries out for recruits ahead of enlistment in the military in the coming year.
It also noted that this past week, 338 members of the ultra-Orthodox community enlisted in the military for mandatory service, including 211 combat soldiers and 127 combat support. The combat soldiers include 70 draftees to the Kfir Brigade’s Netzah Yehuda Battalion; 19 to the Tomer Company in the Givati Brigade’s Rotem Battalion; 19 to the Hetz Company in the Paratroopers Brigade’s 202nd Battalion; 11 to the Nevatim Airbase’s ground defense unit; 35 to Border Police; and 57 to the Hasmonean Brigade, the IDF’s new Haredi brigade.
Going forward, “there will be tens of thousands of members of the ultra-Orthodox community under orders,” Tayeb said.
Tayeb said that the military requires some 12,000 new soldiers — 7,000 of whom would be combat troops — but can only accommodate the enlistment of an additional 3,000 ultra-Orthodox soldiers this year, due to their religious needs. This would be in addition to some 1,800 Haredi soldiers who are already drafted annually.
However, most of those summoned since the summer have not enlisted and as of November the IDF had issued 1,126 “arrest warrants” to those who did not show up to the induction centers. According to Tayeb, around 400 people out of the 10,000 who received orders showed up to induction centers and more than 70 are now in the IDF.
The consequences of being declared a draft evader include receiving a “no exit order” — being barred from leaving the country — and during any encounter with the police, the draft dodger can be arrested.
Tayeb argued that the current legal penalties for failing to comply with enlistment orders were “not strong enough” and needed to be strengthened.
“In practice, those who violate the law may encounter sanctions only if they leave the country or are arrested by the police. To make sanctions more effective, they must be tied to the individual’s daily routine,” he stated.
In a landmark ruling in June, the High Court of Justice ruled unanimously that the government must draft ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students into the military since there was no longer any legal framework to continue the decades-long practice of granting them blanket exemptions from army service.
There are currently an estimated 67,000 Haredi males who are eligible for service and the ultra-Orthodox coalition parties are demanding contentious legislation that broadly maintains their wide-scale exemption from IDF or other national service.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose governing majority depends on the support of the United Torah Judaism and Shas parties, has been seeking to meet their demand in the face of bitter political and public opposition.
A bill dealing with the issue of enlistment is currently stuck in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, whose chairman, Likud MK Yuli Edelstein, has said that the needs of the IDF must come first and that the panel would only advance the legislation if lawmakers can reach a “broad consensus” on the matter.
Writing to Katz last week, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara insisted that any bill regulating the enlistment of the ultra-Orthodox must include personal sanctions against draft dodgers.
Such sanctions are vehemently opposed by the Haredi political and religious leadership, which objects to members of the community serving in the army, fearing they will be secularized.
According to a Finance Ministry’s budget department analysis of the economic impact of the legislation obtained by The Times of Israel, the bill as written is unlikely to bring about a significant increase in ultra-Orthodox enlistment.
Calling for the “immediate application of economic sanctions,” the ministry report asserted that the most effective way of boosting enlistment would be targeting stipends received by Haredi men who engage in full-time study in yeshivas, daycare subsidies for their children, National Insurance benefits, benefits when buying a home and for municipal tax — along with prohibitions on obtaining a driver’s license or traveling abroad.
Delaying or canceling such sanctions would “significantly harm” enlistment efforts, the ministry argued, less than two months after a bill to circumvent a High Court ruling preventing state-funded daycare subsidies from going to the children of ultra-Orthodox men who evade the draft was pulled from the Knesset agenda.
One difficulty in mobilizing ultra-Orthodox troops is that they require a strictly religious environment and often refuse to serve alongside women.
The IDF has been working to create the infrastructure necessary to accommodate soldiers observing an ultra-Orthodox lifestyle and on Sunday it announced that the first 50 ultra-Orthodox soldiers were drafted for regular service in the Israel Defense Forces’ new Haredi brigade, known as the Hasmonean Brigade.
Despite overwhelmingly opposing drafting previously exempt members of their community, a majority of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jews believe that the establishment of additional military units geared toward accommodating their religious sensitivities would increase enlistment to some degree.
However, asked if the ultra-Orthodox parties are pushing for the opening of more Haredi units, one UTJ lawmaker told The Times of Israel this summer that he believed creating suitable conditions for Haredi soldiers was a “secondary issue” that could only be dealt with after the exemptions for full-time yeshiva students are ensured.
Emanuel Fabian contributed to this report.
