As tens of thousands of soldiers are fighting – and some are dying – to defend the state; and as tens of thousands of reservists, who since October 7 have already spent months on reserve duty, and are getting fresh call-up notices; the Knesset voted for a procedure Monday night advancing a bill from the previous Knesset that would legalize wholesale IDF exemptions for haredim.
Talk about parliamentary tone deafness! Talk about being out of step with the mood of the country!
With the country engaged in its longest war since the War of Independence, the morale of soldiers, reservists, and their families needs to be bolstered.
Instead of soldiers in Gaza seeing that the Knesset is trying to relieve their burden by expanding the circle of those carrying it, they are seeing the opposite. Instead of reservists’ wives seeing the parliament pass laws to reduce the amount of time their husbands are pulled away from their homes and children, they are seeing the opposite. And it is demoralizing.
What everyone witnessed on Monday night was a parliamentary ploy to skirt the Supreme Court’s growing impatience with a status quo whereby the vast majority of draft-age haredim do not serve.
The Rule of Continuity procedure that passed 63-57 along strict coalition-opposition lines, with only Defense Minister Yoav Gallant breaking ranks and voting against it, will allow the advancement of the haredi draft bill from 2022, drawn up in what now seems a bygone era where the focus was less on trying to get haredim into the army, and more into making it possible for them to enter the workforce.
Seeking to increase haredi enlistment
That bill sought very slowly to increase haredi enlistment by setting low recruitment targets with potential sanctions for non-compliant yeshivot, while lowering the exemption age for service in order to get more yeshiva students into the labor market. This bill, which the haredi parties opposed then but support now, was drawn up during the previous government headed alternately by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid.
At that time, the impetus for haredi induction was driven more by the belief that exemptions were discriminatory and sent a bad societal message – some are obligated to serve, while others are not – and less by an understanding that the army, which most believed could be “small and smart,” desperately needed manpower.
Then October 7 hit and that idea – that ‘conceptzia’ – went out the window. Then Israel realized it needed a much bigger army; that it needed thousands of foot soldiers to patrol the Gaza border, the northern border, and the increasingly “hot” border with Jordan.
October 7 imposed the realization that a fence with state-of-the-art hi-tech bells and whistles was not enough, that it neither deterred the enemy nor protected the country’s civilians. Soldiers, lots of them, were needed for that.
As a result, what seemed like a workable option in 2022 to enable recruitment of a minimum number of haredim is completely outdated and obsolete in 2024 as the needs of the army, and the country, have dramatically changed.
What in the past was necessary for the creation of a more equitable society – that everyone carry the burden of defense – is now an existential matter.
Some Likud lawmakers, such as Moshe Saada, said they voted for the procedure because it was merely a technical matter and promised to vote against the legislation if it was not significantly altered in committee. But right now those words are mere promises.
On Monday night what the country saw was not words, but action: coalition members voting for a measure that would perpetuate an unfair and immoral practice that has taken root in this country and needs to be uprooted.
Some will shout: “What about Israeli Arabs, who also get wholesale exemptions and secular draft dodgers.” Yes, they too have to be addressed, with secular draft dodgers the easier of these categories to resolve, as Arab IDF service is obviously much more sensitive.
But all of that is a diversion from the main issue: the country no longer has the luxury to exempt 12% of the country’s citizens, and some 16% of the country’s Jewish population, from defending the homeland. That is a message that needs to be sounded loud and clear. On Monday, to its own shame, the coalition badly muffled that message.