If haredi men serve in the IDF at the same rate as the general Jewish public, the army will no longer need reservists to carry out its operational duties, according to research conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute that was presented at the annual Eli Hurvitz Conference on Economy and Society in Jerusalem on Tuesday.
Amid the public debate over the long-standing exemption of ultra-Orthodox men from IDF service and the military’s plan to increase the length of mandatory and reserve duty of those who do serve, the research, which was presented during a panel titled “Economic and Social Ramifications of Burden Equality,” examined the effect of a number of scenarios of haredi service until 2050.
The scenarios were that the haredi percentage of enlistment remains at its current rate of approximately 2%; that it rises to 20%, to 40%, or to 60%; whether it matches the rate of enlistment in the general Jewish public at approximately 87%; and the rate of the 2022 haredi conscription bill proposal that the government intends to pass in July, if the bill remains as is.
The Defense Ministry announced in February that at the current rate of enlistment, it will need to lengthen service for mandatory soldiers from 32 to 36 months; raise the number of days reserve duty from 18 to 42 per year, and for officers from 28 to 55 per year; and raise the cutoff age for reservists by five years.
Taking into account that the IDF does not always use all of the allotment of reservists’ days of service, the researchers calculated that the average number of reserve days would be roughly 28 per year for non-officers.
The research found that the 2022 conscription bill would lead to a gradual increase in haredi manpower and consequently a gradual reduction of days of reserve service, from 24 days in 2025 to 13 days in 2050.
A hypothetical scenario for haredi enlistment
However, as mentioned, in a hypothetical scenario where the rate of haredi enlistment equaled that of the general Jewish public from 2025 onward, the average number of days per year for non-officers would begin at nine, and arrive at zero in 2045.
Adv. Shlomit Ravitsky Tur-Paz, director of the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Center for Shared Society at the IDI, said during the panel, “There are those who are used to blaming haredim for the fact that they do not serve, but the problem is with the state, which incentivizes haredim to stay in yeshivas, which does not recruit haredim even in the absence of an exemption law, and which continues to fund yeshivas despite repeated violations in the condition of their funding. The question is not what haredim will say or do, but rather what state officials will do.”
Also on Tuesday, Ynet reported that the IDF was preparing to send out thousands of recruitment orders to haredim, pending a High Court of Justice decision following a hearing on June 2. The court will be hearing arguments on whether or not to turn a temporary order to draft haredi men that was issued in March into a permanent one.
According to the reports, the IDF’s Personnel Directorate was preparing for a “number of scenarios” to comply with the hearing.