Israel’s Supreme Court rules that the military has to draft ultra-Orthodox Jews

The State of Israel’s First Nation: A Supreme Court Decision Deciding to Exclude Military Service for Ultra-Orthodox Men into Service

In a landmark ruling that threatens to unravel Israel’s government, the country’s Supreme Court has ordered the military to begin drafting ultra-Orthodox men into service, who’ve long been exempt from service.

“These days, in the midst of a difficult war, the burden of that inequality is more acute than ever — and requires the advancement of a sustainable solution to this issue,” the Supreme Court judges wrote in their ruling.

Mr. Netanyahu has called for legislation that would generally maintain the exemption for the religious students. If he moves forward with the plan, other members of his government could break ranks, and the public would lose confidence in the government over the war in Gaza.

The Supreme Court ruled that the government could no longer transfer subsidies to religious schools, which were no longer legal for draft-age students.

The purpose of establishing the State of Israel was to be a home for the Jewish people, who rely on Torah to survive. The Holy Torah will prevail,” Yitzhak Goldknopf, an ultra-Orthodox minister, said in a statement on Monday.

But in Israel, where military service is otherwise mandatory, Haredi families have on average six or seven children, a birth rate that makes them the fastest growing segment of the country’s population. They now make up about a quarter of enlistment age men, according to Yonahan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute.

The Israeli Military Exemption: The First Three Months After the Gaza Attack and a Million More Palestinians: The Campaign for an End of the Orthodox Exemption

The decision was unanimous and comes amid intensified public opposition to the policy following the attack on Israel last year and the months-long war in Gaza.

The religious exemption has been held to violate laws on equal protection by Israel’s Supreme Court. In its new ruling, the court said the state was carrying out “invalid selective enforcement, which represents a serious violation of the rule of law.”

A freeze on subsidies for religious seminaries was instituted in March but kept in place by the court.

The ultra-Orthodox military exemption goes back to Israel’s 1948 founding in the wake of the Holocaust, when protecting the remnant of religious scholars was considered key for a Jewish state. At first, it only applied to some 400 people from Orthodox, or Haredi, families.

Netanyahu’s entire political career was a constant directive to keep the alliance with the ultra-Orthodox, so that he could maintain his grip on power.

For ultra-Orthodox leaders the fight is existential. Haredi means a person who is fearful of God. They refuse to engage with the modern world and fear that exposing young men to military service will end their life style.

Since the surprise Hamas assault Oct. 7 that killed 1,200 people in Israel, the country has been fighting on three fronts: A punishing military campaign in Gaza that has killed more than 37,600 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health; stepped up battles in the West Bank and mutual attacks along its northern border with the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah. To support all this, the Israeli military has called up hundreds of thousands of reservists, drafted others early and pushed for longer rotations.

“The people that are serving will now have to do twice or three times more. That’s crazy. It will not happen,” says Ron Scherf, co-founder of Brothers and Sisters in Arms. Since the start of the war in Gaza, the group of reservists has held regular protests calling for an end to the broad ultra-Orthodox exemption. A majority of Jewish people in Israel think that the exemption should be changed.

A couple thousand ultra-Orthodox people did voluntarily sign up for military service after the Hamas attack. The center of ultra-Orthodox life includes a 36-year-old social worker named Mordechai Porat.

Porat has spent months providing therapy at a nearby military base. But he never wears his green army fatigues in the city and keeps his military dog tag hidden under his shirt. Even with this low profile, he says he’s paid a price.

Source: Israeli Supreme Court rules that the military must begin drafting ultra-Orthodox men

Why the Israelis don’t want to marry in the army, according to Nechumi Yaffe at Tel Aviv University [Phi4|

The ability to marry will be damaged by going to the army according to Nechumi Yaffe of Tel Aviv University. It will make the relationship difficult in the family.

“I think the Israeli society should ask itself, actually, do you want to see them in the army?” she says. Israelis want to see blood. They want to see them in uniform, shooting. I don’t think it’s a great idea.”