Haredi draft: When ultra-Orthodoxy meets the truth - opinion

• Published date: 08 March 2024
• Author: AMOTZ ASA-EL
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

The 47-year-old pact, whereby ultra-Orthodoxy got wholesale draft exemptions, budgets, and subsidies in turn for joining Likud's coalitions will next month come to an end, due to a rare alignment of juridical, political, and social stars

The juridical part is the High Court of Justice's ruling last month that since the government has not amended the unconstitutional Conscription Law, and since the deadline for its amendment is this month, the government must explain why it won't conscript ultra-Orthodox men, and also stop funding their yeshivas.

The political part is Defense Minister Yoav Gallant's demand, announced dramatically last week, that the law will be amended through an agreement with Benny Gantz's National Unity party.

Gantz wants an amendment that will make most ultra-Orthodox young men, gradually over a decade, serve either in the army or in civilian alternatives. Gallant concurs.

"All must get under the stretcher," he said, using the Israeli metaphor about soldiers' helping each other. "Without physical existence, there is no spiritual existence," he said, echoing what every Zionist thinks.

An alternative bill, one that would sideline Gallant, is impractical since a bill concerning the military must be introduced by the defense minister.

Gallant, a former commander of the Naval Commando, may not be particularly eloquent, but he sure is brave. He has his idea of justice and is prepared to run with it no matter what the political risk, the way he did last year when he demanded that Benjamin Netanyahu halt his judicial reform, arguing that the disunity it was fomenting was strategically unaffordable.

Now Gallant's move is forcing Netanyahu to woo the very political center that his longtime alliance with ultra-Orthodoxy disparaged and abused. Worse, from Netanyahu's viewpoint, the deal he so cherishes is now ready to explode socially, because of the war.

The war, which will be recalled as the Netanyahu era's aftermath and emblem, is exacting an exorbitant price from Israeli society: physically, economically, and emotionally.

Millions of citizens follow anxiously the IDF's announcements of fallen soldiers' names. Mainstream Israelis have personal acquaintances among the war's fallen, wounded, hostages, and their families. Ultra-Orthodox Israelis do not. That gap alone pushes ultra-Orthodoxy out of the social pale. Now add to this the army's need, because of the war, to make those who do enlist serve even more, and you get the wrath that...