Shas lawmakers visit draft dodgers in military prison, pledge to pass exemption bill

Lawmakers belonging to the ultra-Orthodox Shas party met with yeshiva students detained in military prison for draft dodging on Thursday, in the third such visit this month, while praising their “selfless dedication to the Torah.”

MKs Michael Malkieli and Haim Biton met with Haredim arrested “for the crime of studying Torah,” a party spokesman said in a statement, quoting the lawmakers as telling the evaders that “an entire generation rests upon your shoulders” and that their actions will be “remembered for generations.”

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 Israel Defense Forces 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.

A recent wave of arrests of draft dodgers has failed to increase Haredi enlistment.

Last Thursday, MKs Yoav Ben-Tzur and Uriel Buso made a similar visit, updating the prisoners 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,” according to a previous statement.

For the past year, the Haredi leadership has pushed for a law 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.

A government-backed bill making its way through the Knesset, which sets yearly quotas, would, if passed, continue to grant military service exemptions to full-time yeshiva students while ostensibly increasing conscription among graduates of Haredi educational institutions.

A week before Ben-Tzur and Buso, 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.

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.

Malkieli and Biton’s prison visit on Thursday took place around the same time as dozens of ultra-Orthodox men injured at least 13 police officers in riots in Jerusalem, apparently linked to the draft issue.

The commotion broke out after a municipal inspector who had been issuing parking tickets in the capital came under attack from two young Haredi men, police said.

Police officers called to aid the inspector in distress arrested one of the assailants, angering locals. According to Hebrew outlets, officers had realized that the assailants were draft dodgers and sought to hand them over to the Military Police. Hundreds then gathered around the officers in an attempt to free the detainee, and events quickly mushroomed into rioting.

Charlie Summers contributed to this report.