Smotrich is irredeemably losing favor among voters for backing Haredi draft evasion
Finance minister fails to realize that opposing a hostage deal won’t win back support, as religious Zionists seek new political home that would give IDF service its rightful place
Tal Schneider is a Political Correspondent at The Times of Israel
With national budget talks getting underway, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich is plummeting in the polls and enjoying zero public support. His base is dismayed, to put it mildly, by his deafening silence on the issue of exemptions for ultra-Orthodox men from mandatory military service.
Smotrich has been hemorrhaging support for the past year, but his voters now seem more dissatisfied than ever before. A poll published by the Maariv daily on Friday provided further evidence of the trend, again placing his party beneath the electoral threshold of four seats in the 120-member Knesset, as many polls have done for months.
Before the war in Gaza, sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, terror onslaught, polls showed his political partnership with Itamar Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit snagging 10-12 Knesset seats between them. But after the factions split, Ben Gvir alone was estimated by polls at six to eight seats – and rose as high as 12 last winter – whereas Smotrich didn’t cross the threshold most of the time.
The initial distinction between them surrounded their stance on the first hostage deal with Hamas, in November last year. Smotrich voted for it, despite his prior objections, after being convinced by security officials. However, Ben Gvir has adamantly opposed any deal from the very outset.
Ben Gvir has the support of some 300,000 Israelis who seem to prefer pursuing the military campaign at all costs to releasing the hostages. Those who voted for Smotrich in 2022 appear to hold a more nuanced and complex position.
At the beginning of the war, Smotrich believed that rejecting a hostage deal of any kind would help him win back voters he had lost, so he swiftly made his opposition clear at any hint of negotiations between Israel and its enemies.
But his voters remained unimpressed — and not because he is one of the worst finance ministers in Israel’s history. Rather, it was due to his indirect role in preserving the current coalition and his tacit support for blanket exemptions for Haredi men from military service.
This rage against the party leader is evident everywhere; for example, the floods of social media posts by religious Zionist women whose husbands serve in the reserves.
A new Facebook group calling itself “Partners in Service” is a case in point. It is led by Ofra Lifshitz, who sends updates in Facebook or WhatsApp groups and is also a frequent media interviewee. Her groups have been echoing calls for public action in recent weeks, alongside stating the obvious: “Smotrich, if you remain silent we won’t vote for you anymore.”
In a post from October 19, she commended her husband — a colonel in the IDF reserves who heads the Siach-Yitzhak Yeshiva in the West Bank settlement of Efrat – for serving over 250 days in reserve duty, and noted that their son, too, is a combat soldier.
“It is inconceivable that a year has already gone by since the war broke out. During that time, they could have recruited and trained three, even four, new brigades of Haredi conscripts to ease the burden. But this did not happen,” she wrote. “Instead, my son, who is a team commander in the Givati Brigade, had his service extended by four months.”
During an interview with Radio 103FM on Friday, Lifshitz voiced a prediction many in Haredi society fail to realize but one that is widely believed outside it: They are about to become their own state, separate from the rest of Israel.
Her Facebook group includes posts by other religious women who share similar experiences and express their dismay over the moves by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud and other smaller coalition parties to pass new legislation cementing the exemption of most Haredi men from mandatory military service.
Such groups hardly ever mention secular Jews, who bear the brunt of the reserve duty, because it is regarded as an intra-religious community debate. Religious Zionists were furious when United Torah Judaism party chairman Yitzhak Goldknopf indicated they weren’t true Torah learners. Lifshitz, whose husband is in active reserve duty while heading a yeshiva, proves their point.
It appears that Smotrich, Ben Gvir, and Shas party head Aryeh Deri remain unperturbed by the mounting criticism and prioritize the survival of the coalition. And Smotrich, instead of acknowledging his alienation of his supporters, apparently continues to believe that opposing a hostage deal will help him retain his political strength. This is reflected in his threats to dissolve the government should a hostage deal materialize.
Keeping mum on Haredi draft evasion and enabling its enshrinement in law would prolong the coalition’s shelf life by another year, during which time he evidently believes the public will come to terms with the new reality and support him once more.
If Smotrich is in dire electoral straits, how could it be that the ruling Likud party is consistently growing stronger in the polls while supporting Haredi draft evasion — and simultaneously representing voters in active reserve duty?
Prominent religious Zionist figures unrelated to the party assess that if former prime minister Naftali Bennett, who has been focusing on military conscription, were to officially present his candidacy, he would immediately siphon off many of the Likud votes.
צפו ושתפו. pic.twitter.com/MD5UyhgACM
— Naftali Bennett נפתלי בנט (@naftalibennett) October 25, 2024
Even former minister Yoaz Hendel, who is spearheading a movement of reservists, wins as many as six Knesset seats in some polls. Religious Zionist society is desperate for a new political home that would give military service its rightful place.
That, in turn, is why Bennett launched a political campaign surrounding the draft bill. “They’re talking about [conscripting] 3,000 [Haredim] a year when there’s a need for 20,000,” he said in a video posted Friday.
Bennett would be able to draw Knesset seats from Smotrich and Likud, as well as from the political center represented by Yesh Atid party leader Yair Lapid and National Unity party head Benny Gantz. The Haredi draft bill will be the cornerstone of his election campaign.
Translated and edited from the original Hebrew on The Times of Israel’s Hebrew sister site, Zman Yisrael.
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