The High Court of Justice will hear on Wednesday morning a petition by several NGOs demanding that the IDF immediately send out draft orders to the over 60,000 haredi (ultra-Orthodox) men eligible for service.
The petitioners – the Movement for Quality Government in Israel and Israel’s Defensive Shield Forum – have argued that the IDF failed to fulfill its legal duty to send out these draft orders after the legality of their exemption ended in June.
In a meeting in the Knesset State Control Committee on Tuesday, head of the IDF Personnel Planning Branch Brig.-Gen. Shay Taib said the military dispatched 10,000 draft orders so far for the 2024 draft year, which Taib explained began on July 1 and will end on June 30.
Taib said he sent out the number of orders based on directives by former defense minister Yoav Gallant.
Several MKs and other participants in the meeting argued that the IDF did not have the authority to refrain from sending out draft orders to all eligible haredi soldiers – and that it was not dependent on the defense minister to do so.
Taib said the IDF can draft 4,800 haredim out of the 2024 18-year-old haredi cohort; approximately 5,700 of the 2025 cohort; and the entire cohort (over 13,000) from 2026 onwards.
These, however, are the numbers of actual inductees into the IDF, not the number of orders sent out. Speakers at the committee meeting pointed out there was no reason not to send out initial draft orders to all those who are eligible, since in any case, it is unlikely that all of them will respect the orders.
IDF is caving to 'political pressure'
Movement for Quality Government chairman Eliad Shraga said the IDF was caving to “political pressures” by not presenting the real numbers that it really needs and that the military had yet to file relevant numbers ahead of today’s hearing.
According to Shraga, the IDF is engaging in “three cycles of deception” – the real numbers of combat soldiers the IDF needs; the number of haredim the IDF is capable of drafting; and the actual draft numbers.
Shraga said the number of haredim actually being drafted were in fact not haredim, but rather people who grew up in haredi society but no longer belonged to it.