Up to 80% of all draft evaders are ultra-Orthodox, IDF general tells Knesset

Up to 80 percent of Israelis currently classified as draft evaders hail from the ultra-Orthodox community, the head of the army’s personnel directorate told lawmakers on Tuesday, amid a spike in the number of people officially classified as evading mandatory military service.

The statistics were presented by Brig. Gen. Shay Tayeb, head of the IDF Personnel Directorate’s Planning and Personnel Management Division, to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

The committee was deliberating on a controversial bill that would codify blanket exemptions from military service for full-time yeshiva students, while setting modest conscription targets for the community as a whole. The bill is being advanced as the IDF has warned that it faces an urgent manpower shortage.

According to Tayeb, 49% of those designated as draft evaders, or who have received the so-called Order 12, sent to those who don’t show up to enlist when required to do so, are Haredi.

Among those whose background could not be definitively identified, 25% to 30% more are considered “likely Haredi” based on indications such as educational background and other factors, he said.

Tayeb reported that the total number of people who have either been designated as evaders or have received an Order 12 stands at 68,000, a significant increase over the 13,000 on record only two years ago.

“The trend is clear; the numbers have grown at dramatic rates. Most entries into this group of evaders and tzav 12 cases are naturally occurring due to the [draft] orders, the lack of a law, and the absence of deferments. It appears they are from the ultra-Orthodox public,” he said.

The IDF has sent out tens of thousands of enlistment orders to previously exempt Haredim since 2024, when the High Court of Justice ruled that the decades-long blanket exemptions from army duty traditionally afforded to full-time Haredi yeshiva students were illegal.

“What’s amazing about this fact is that 80% of them are Haredi and this percentage is only growing all the time, both in numbers and percentages,” committee member Moshe Tur-Paz, of the opposition Yesh Atid party, told The Times of Israel.

“It’s three to four times the relative [ultra-Orthodox] share in the population, so it’s a huge percentage, of course. And contrary to [the argument] they tried to present in the past weeks here, the facts are very clear to the general public,” Tur-Paz said. He was referring to claims that Haredim did not make up a majority of draft evaders.

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.

For the past two years, the Haredi leadership has pushed for a law keeping its constituency out of the IDF, after the High Court ruled the long-standing exemptions illegal.

Since then, coalition lawmakers, dependent on Haredi support to keep the governing coalition together, have struggled to find a formulation that could win ultra-Orthodox backing while also meeting demands for the community to share in the national burden of mandatory military service.

The latest version of the bill, which would enshrine continued exemptions for full-time yeshiva students, has come under fire from IDF brass, the attorney general, and a wide array of other critics, who have argued that it is full of loopholes and will not increase Haredi enlistment or meet the IDF’s needs.