“The non-drafting of yeshiva students became a breaking of the law en masse. The Defense Ministry did order draft notices to be sent to a great many yeshiva students, but none were actually drafted.…[the IDF has repeatedly warned that] "if the yeshiva students are not drafted there will not be enough soldiers. The numbers show that in terms of equally bearing the burden the situation is not static and every postponement of a solution to the problem makes it worse."
Greatest Number Of Haredim Ever Dodge Military Service
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
Ha’aretz reports that the percentage of young haredi men who received exemptions from compulsory military service this year has climbed to a record high – 13.8 percent of all Israeli males who are otherwise would have been drafted, a rise of 0.8 percent over the past three years.
That number is expected to rise at least until haredim are drafted as other Israeli Jews are drafted. Israel’s High Court of Justice has ordered as much, but the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has taken repeated steps at the behest of his haredi political allies to illegally quash the ruling’s implementation.
Draft exemptions for full-time haredi yeshiva students represented 8.4 percent of all draft-eligible Israeli males in 2005. The number climbed to 10.9 percent in 2008 and 13 percent in 2009 through 2011.
Each percentage point is the rough equivalent of one battalion of soldiers. If all eligible young haredi men were actually drafted this year, that would add almost 14 battalions (just under 7,000 new soldiers) to the IDF.
Just over half of the young Israelis found to be exempt from the draft this year were exempted because they are haredi yeshiva students. The rest were exempted for other reasons, including physical disabilities, chronic diseases, and mental health issues.
Ha’aretz notes that by the start of the next decade, haredi men who are given draft exemptions because they are full-time yeshiva students will rise to 20 percent of all draft-eligible men in Israel.
The Haredi draft is likely to become a key issue in the upcoming election campaign in light of the lapse of the so-called Tal law, which governed ultra-Orthodox exemptions from service, and the failure of the Netanyahu government to put a new system in place.
Reform Rabbi Uri Regev, who is a lawyer and who serves as president of Hiddush, a group promoting religious freedom, told Ha’aretz that “the non-drafting of yeshiva students became a breaking of the law en masse. The Defense Ministry did order draft notices to be sent to a great many yeshiva students, but none were actually drafted.…[the IDF has repeatedly warned that] "if the yeshiva students are not drafted there will not be enough soldiers. The numbers show that in terms of equally bearing the burden the situation is not static and every postponement of a solution to the problem makes it worse."
[Hat Tip: HeathenHassid.]