"……For Israeli economists…the reluctance of ultra-Orthodox (or Haredi) men to work, coupled with their community’s high birth rate (double the national average), is a problem. A study recently completed by the finance ministry predicts that on current trends Israel’s public debt, currently 67% of GDP, will spiral to 170% over the next 50 years. The ministry says that 45.7% of Haredi men are in the labor force, far less than the national employment rate of 60.4% and lower than for any group except for Arab women…. Haredi women are not expected to study: their participation rate is 71%. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, the Haredim were just under 10% of Israel’s population in 2009; by 2059 it predicts they will be around 27%. Israel cannot afford to keep paying them not to work.…"
The Economist reports:
…For Israeli economists…the reluctance of ultra-Orthodox (or Haredi) men to work, coupled with their community’s high birth rate (double the national average), is a problem. A study recently completed by the finance ministry predicts that on current trends Israel’s public debt, currently 67% of GDP, will spiral to 170% over the next 50 years. The ministry says that 45.7% of Haredi men are in the labor force, far less than the national employment rate of 60.4% and lower than for any group except for Arab women…. Haredi women are not expected to study: their participation rate is 71%. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, the Haredim were just under 10% of Israel’s population in 2009; by 2059 it predicts they will be around 27%. Israel cannot afford to keep paying them not to work.
At the state’s foundation in 1948, Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, accepted the rabbis’ request to be allowed to rebuild the yeshivas which had been destroyed in the Holocaust in Europe. A first quota of 400 yeshiva students was exempted from military service. In 1977 the first Likud government, in which Haredi parties were coalition partners, removed that cap. Successive governments have expanded funding for yeshiva stipends as well as benefits for large families.
The government before the current one included no ultra-Orthodox parties. So the secular Yesh Atid party, part of that coalition, was able to push through a law criminalizing draft-avoiders and cutting benefits. The new coalition formed last month by [the Likud Party’s] Binyamin Netanyahu as prime minister includes two Haredi parties. These have been promised a repeal of that law and the restoration of benefits to their previous level. The economics ministry, which runs employment policy, and the Knesset finance committee, which has the final say on benefits, are controlled by senior Haredi politicians.…
And of course, those senior haredi politicians blame anti-haredi 'discrimination' for the high rate of unemployed haredi men. After all, they say, many haredi men would leave full time yeshiva study for the workplace if they could only get good jobs. But they can't, haredi high-tech entrepreneur Moshe Friedman, tells the Economist, because “everyone I met [when I looked for funding] immediately asked me, why didn’t I serve in the army and what does a haredi know about technology?” It is this "discrimination" that is the problem, haredi politicians claim.
But the fact is that non-haredi Jewish Israelis are legally forced to serve in the IDF or do national civilian service. They sacrifice years of their lives – and sometimes their lives themselves – defending the country, and must do reserve IDF duty each year, often on the front lines, well into middle age. They delay university, delay marriage, lose years of income and pay exorbitant taxes to defend the country.
Meanwhile, their haredi counterparts go to yeshiva grammar and high schools that teach little to no secular subjects like math, computers, science, English, civics, and other subjects necessary in today's business world. They don't serve in the IDF, openly dodging the draft if necessary to avoid it. And many do not pay taxes but use a large part of Israel's social services budget to support their no-work all-yeshiva-study lifestyle, and in the process literally take food out of the mouths of Israelis who are poor because they are ill or elderly or disabled or simply very unlucky. And on top of all this, Israel's haredi politicians are some of the most arrogant and obnoxious individuals on the planet earth, let alone in Israel.
Do lots of Israelis despise haredim? Polls show the number that do so is lower than haredi politicians would have you believe, and the discrimination that some haredim suffer from is drawn largely from wider haredi misbehavior, not some irrational hatred of haredim.
In other words, if you want Israeli society to stop discriminating against haredim, haredim must first attempt to be honest partners in that society. They have to serve in the IDF, go to schools that teach them secular subjects and prepare them for the modern workforce, and stop acting as if the state is some endlessly full piggy bank that exists in order to support them.
But top haredi rabbinic leaders and haredi politicians have shown no willingness to do this, and that stubborn refusal along with the cravenness of politicians like Netanyahu who appease them in order to retain power are driving Israel to destruction at breakneck speed.
If Israel implodes in a decade or three, you'll know who to blame, but little consolation that will be.