“With each passing day, it becomes increasingly clear that we will need a new reality in Israel,” declared the Israel Democracy Institute in a recent report. “It is time for a new, more just social contract.”
The remedy proposed by the think tank was not to extend rights to the five million Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, naturally, but to require military service from the country’s ultra-Orthodox population.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews, known in Israel as Haredim, pride themselves on living what they view as a traditional lifestyle. Isolated in tight-knit communities, they follow a strict interpretation of Judaism and dress in a conservative style contemporaneous with the movement’s emergence in 19th century Europe. Young haredim often devote themselves to the study of the Torah at special schools known as yeshivas, sometimes foregoing participation in the workforce as they pursue religious education full-time.
Yeshiva students are legally excused from required military service in Israel, an accommodation that dates back to the founding of the country. At that time the ruling only applied to a few hundred military-age men. But the number has ballooned to around 66,000 amid the rapid growth of the religiously conservative community.
The military exemption has emerged as a major source of tension between ultra-Orthodox Jewish Israelis and other sectors of society.
“The army changes everyone,” said ultra-Orthodox Rabbi Nechemia Steinberger, explaining the Haredi community’s resistance to military service. “The sad truth is Haredim will not be able to sacrifice the change of their children because their ethos for the past 150 years was ‘we do not change.’ That’s their raison d’etre.”
“They see the army as a secular place, as part of the Jewish Zionist state that they don’t fully identify with,” he said.
That division sometimes leads to physical confrontations between the ultra-Orthodox and more secular Israelis as Haradim protest military service, or even public advertising featuring women and vehicle traffic through their neighborhoods on the Sabbath. On Thursday, thousands of Israelis protested Haredis’ military exemption at a large rally in Tel Aviv.
The issue is a conundrum for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israeli courts have ruled the Haredis’ military exemption is discriminatory in recent years, ordering conscription from the community. Netanyahu, who counts many conservative and ultra-Orthodox Jews among his political coalition, has hesitated to comply.
“If they force us to go to the army, we will move abroad,” said ultra-Orthodox Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef this week, promising to resist any conscription effort. “We will buy a ticket. We will go there.”
But polling shows most Israelis oppose the community’s military exemption, and Netanyahu’s political opposition has hammered him over the issue. “There are not enough soldiers,” said former Prime Minister Yair Lapid at the Thursday rally in Tel Aviv. “And at the same time there are 66,000 young and healthy members of the Haredi community, at enlistment age, who are not joining.”
Israel’s economy has been battered in recent months as a portion of the workforce has been called up to fight in Gaza. The prospect of war against Hezbollah in Lebanon threatens to place even more strain on the IDF. Additionally, some half a million Israelis have reportedly fled the country since last October’s Hamas attack.
Netanyahu may soon face no choice but to conscript new troops from the ultra-Orthodox community. But in doing so he risks a major social explosion that might further fracture an already intensely-divided Israeli society.