“The coalition has recorded an impressive achievement by approving a law that on the one hand will not bring about the enlistment of one yeshiva student, but has managed to gather together 300,000 haredim against it."
MK Ayelet Shaked
Originally published at 11:43 pm DST 3-5-2014
Shaked Committee Finishes Work On New Draft Law, Few Haredi Yeshiva Students Expected To Be Drafted
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
The Knesset committee charged with writing the new universal draft law has finished its work, the Jerusalem Post reported tonight. The bill will now go to the Knesset plenum next week for its second and third readings. If it passes both, it will become the new law of the land.
The Shaked Committee began working on the bill in July.
The bill exempts approximately 30,000 full-time haredi yeshiva students who are now 22-years-old from the draft and allows similar full time haredi yeshiva students who are between the ages of 18- and 22-years-old to defer their military service until they turn 26, at which time they can be granted a full exemption. And only students who leave yeshivas before they turn 26 will be required to serve in the IDF or in national civilian service.
But the law does set quotas for haredi enlistment the haredi community is required to meet, but those quotas will be nonbinding through mid-2017.
Then, if the haredi quota for 2017 is not met, all 18-year-old haredi yeshiva students will thereafter be obligated to serve in the IDF, except for 1,800 “top” students each year, selected by haredi yeshiva deans, who will get complete exemptions.
The law has so many holes built in it that many observers believe that few, if any, actual haredi yeshiva students will ever be drafted.
“The coalition has recorded an impressive achievement by approving a law that on the one hand will not bring about the enlistment of one yeshiva student, but has managed to gather together 300,000 haredim against it,” the head of the Hiddush religious freedom nonprofit, Reform Rabbi Uri Regev, said, referencing the approximately 300,000 haredim who protested the proposed law Sunday.