Over 1,200 Haredim face arrest for ignoring army recruiting notices, Knesset lawmakers told

February 4, 2025 by Pesach Benson
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Of the 3,000 religious Haredi men who received army conscription notices during the summer, only 461 complied, Knesset lawmakers were told on Monday.

Israeli police disperse Haredi Jews demonstrating in Jerusalem against plans to conscript yeshiva students into the Israeli military on Jan. 28, 2025. Photo by Yoav Dudkevitch/TPS-IL

Testifying to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Brig. Gen. Shay Tayeb, head of the IDF Personnel Directorate’s Planning and Personnel Management Division added that arrest warrants were issued for 1,212. Another 1,242 individuals who did not report to recruitment centres are barred from leaving the country, Tayeb added.

The military began making plans to draft yeshiva students after Israel’s High Court of Justice ruled in June that exemptions for the Haredi community were illegal. The issue has not been resolved and is contributing to a coalition crisis.

Military service is compulsory for all Israeli citizens. However, Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, and the country’s leading rabbis agreed to a status quo that deferred military service for Haredi men studying in yeshivot, or religious institutions. At the time, no more than several hundred men were studying in yeshivot.

However, the Orthodox community has grown significantly since Israel’s founding. In January 2023, the Central Bureau of Statistics reported that Haredim are Israel’s fastest-growing community and projected it would constitute 16% of the population by the end of the decade. According to the Israel Democracy Institute, the number of yeshiva students exceeded 138,000 in 2021.

A recent survey found that the Israeli public is shifting decisively in favor of integrating Orthodox Jews into military service. The Israel Democracy Institute found that only 9% of Israelis support the current arrangement exempting Haredim from military service, a steep decline from 22% ten months earlier.

Comments

One Response to “Over 1,200 Haredim face arrest for ignoring army recruiting notices, Knesset lawmakers told”
  1. David Neil says:

    Here is the best solution I have found so far to this issue and I urge others to support: Chedvata.org

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