Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled that the army must begin conscripting ultra-Orthodox Jewish men. In Israel, military service is compulsory for men and women, but ultra-Orthodox Jews have always been exempt: it is a much-discussed issue, which has become further divisive with the start of the war in the Gaza Strip and could create many problems for Israel. within the coalition that supports the conservative government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. However, it is not clear how the recruitment will take place, when it will actually begin and how many people it will involve.
The exemption of the ultra-Orthodox is not based on a state law, but depends on a series of administrative provisions which are periodically renewed by the government. Now the Court has ruled that, in the absence of a legal framework that clearly distinguishes between students of ultra-Orthodox schools and the rest of citizens, the government does not have the authority to exempt only the former from military service. In announcing the decision, the Court’s acting president, Uzi Vogelman, said that “in the midst of an attritional war, the burden of inequality is harder than ever and demands a solution.”
In Israel the ultra-Orthodox men, called haredim in Hebrew, there are more than 1.2 million, 13 percent of the population. Of these, around 67 thousand could be enlisted, but the army said that every year those who do so voluntarily are just 700, a number which is lower than the data released in the past. After the Hamas attack in Israel last October 7 and the subsequent Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, more than 300,000 Israelis were called up to serve in the army as reservists, while ultra-Orthodox Jews were able to benefit from the exemption.
– Read also: The reservist system in Israel, explained
In the past the Supreme Court has ruled many times unfavorable to the exemption. The latest at the end of March, when he established that exemption from military service could not be based on administrative measures renewed from year to year, and asked Netanyahu’s government to approve a real law.
Netanyahu, however, was unable to find an agreement, due to the opposition of some parties that support him: on the one hand the ultra-Orthodox components of the government are not willing to make concessions, on the other the components of the secular and nationalist right of the government (such as Netanyahu’s Likud party) are hesitant to pass a deeply unpopular law that grants tens of thousands of men the right not to join the army. The Supreme Court’s decision will therefore be a big political problem for Netanyahu.
Also at the end of March, with the same decision, the Court blocked public funding for religious schools attended by ultra-Orthodox Jews who were exempted from compulsory military service or did not voluntarily join the army. The schools involved are called yeshivot and are independent of the Israeli Ministry of Education. Netanyahu’s government has always granted them many privileges, precisely to accommodate the ultra-Orthodox parties that support him: for example, many schools teach only religious subjects, that is, those that concern the learning of sacred texts and topics, and not others such as mathematics, science and English.
The exemption from military service requires that students not do other jobs and dedicate themselves exclusively to the study of Jewish sacred texts, and for this they receive a salary from the state: the blocking of funds was therefore a potentially problematic measure. Overall, the Israeli state spends the equivalent of approximately $400 million per year to finance the yeshivotand public student stipends amount to about a third of the funds.
– Read also: The military exemption for the ultra-Orthodox has become a problem for Netanyahu
