The IDF’s Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz told the Knesset’s Shaked Committee yesterday that the IDF wants haredim drafted at the youngest age possible. As it now stands, the government is hoping to defer the haredi draft age from 18-years-old like other Israelis to somewhere in the early 20s.
Draft Haredim Early, IDF Chief Of Staff Says
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
The IDF’s Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz told the Knesset’s Shaked Committee yesterday that the IDF wants haredim drafted at the youngest age possible, Yeshiva World reported. As it now stands, the government is hoping to defer the haredi draft age from 18-years-old like other Israelis to somewhere in the early 20s.
“The younger they are inducted the better for them and for the IDF,” Gantz reportedly said, noting that that the older a haredi man is at draft age, the more costly drafting him becomes because of government commitments to pay married draftees more money than is paid single draftees. It also more difficult, Gantz said, for married men with children to serve.
Haredi rabbis and politicians oppose any draft of haredi and have been working to scuttle it while at the same time pushing out the age of haredi induction as far as possible, some say, to make the cost to the government exponentially higher to reduce its incentive to draft haredim.
Two haredi Members of Knesset from the Ashkenazi haredi United Torah Judaism Party, Meir Porush and Rabbi Moshe Gafni, warned the committee that passing a draft law that contains criminal penalties for haredim who dodge the draft will lead to confrontations and civil strife with the haredi community and will not achieve the goal of increasing the number of haredim who serve from the tiny number it is now.
Haredi leaders, including Porush and Gafni, have previously threatened to order all haredim to dodge the draft and overwhelm the country’s criminal justice system and prisons if criminal penalties for draft dodging are passed into law.