‘There is no rule of law’: High Court justices rail at failure to enlist Haredim |
The High Court of Justice sharply reprimanded the police on Sunday during a hearing on the government’s efforts to enforce ultra-Orthodox military conscription, with one justice declaring that the rule of law had failed.
Justice David Mintz, the strongest conservative on the bench, accused police of being afraid of “the mob,” when the police representative complained that arrest operations of ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, draft dodgers resulted in mass riots.
Other judges expressed astonishment that police enforcement against draft evasion was greater against non-Haredi draft dodgers than Haredim, despite the overwhelming majority of draft dodgers coming from the Haredi community.
The court was also fiercely critical of the government itself, and repeatedly accused it of failing to do anything to implement the court’s rulings regarding enforcing the draft on ultra-Orthodox military-age men.
All five justices on the panel expressed frustration bordering on anger with the government’s failure to enforce the draft, and asked pointed questions of the attorney general’s representatives and the petitioners’ lawyers about how judicial orders could most effectively prompt state action on the issue.
The justices’ questions appeared to indicate they were seeking to formulate orders to ensure that government ministries would be legally bound to revoke various welfare benefits for those obligated to perform military service who have refused to comply with enlistment orders.
The hearing dealt with a request by the Movement for Quality Government in Israel that the justices find the government in contempt of court for failing to abide by a November 19, 2025, ruling that it must draw up effective social and economic enforcement measures against ultra-Orthodox men who fail to enlist for compulsory military service.
The court ordered the government to respond by January 4, and when it failed to do so the Movement for Quality Government filed its contempt of court request.
A hearing on the request was originally scheduled for March 1, but was postponed because of the war with Iran.
The government is yet to draw up such enforcement policies.
According to an update from the Attorney General’s Office last month, 79,836 draft orders have been sent by the Israel Defense Forces to ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students who were obligated to perform military service when the High Court ruled in June 2024 that there was no longer any legal framework for them to receive blanket military exemptions, or those who became obligated since that ruling.
Of those, only 7,029 presented themselves to IDF enlistment offices and just 2,178 enlisted, or just 2.7 percent of those who received enlistment orders.
Supreme Court Deputy President Noam Sohlberg presided over the hearing alongside Mintz, Daphna Barak Erez, Yael Wilner, and Ofer Grosskopf.
During the hearing, the justices questioned police representative Meirav Wagner over figures indicating that there is greater enforcement against non-Haredi draft dodgers than Haredim, despite a representative of the IDF’s personnel directorate stating that 75% to 80% of all draft dodgers were Haredi.
According to figures presented by the Attorney General’s Office to the court, from January 2025 to January 2026, 298 draft dodgers were detained at Ben Gurion airport, 97 of whom were from the ultra-Orthodox community.
And from August 1, 2025, to January 15, 2026, just 123 draft dodgers were arrested on the police’s own initiative. Of those, only 17 were from the ultra-Orthodox community.
“Reading the data gives the impression of a complete failure of the police. What are you doing?” Sohlberg demanded of Wagner.
When she pointed to mass Haredi riots during attempts to arrest draft dodgers, even Mintz, the most hardline advocate of judicial restraint on the bench, who rarely speaks during hearings, spoke up.
“A situation has been created in which the police is giving power to the mob, and there is no rule of law. You are not enforcing order out of fear,” he said.
More broadly, the justices were highly critical of the government’s inaction on the matter.
“Nothing has moved since the [November 19] ruling,” Sohlberg admonished Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs, who had been invited to relay the government’s position to the court.
When Fuchs gave evasive answers about not having received enforcement options from the attorney general, Sohlberg retorted, “It feels like this ping-pong is just an attempt to buy time,” referring to the government’s efforts to pass legislation reinstating blanket military service exemptions for ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students.
When Fuchs then sought to justify the delays and the government legislation by stating that drafting the ultra-Orthodox into military service was a “long societal process,” Mintz pointed out that this was irrelevant in the face of the court’s rulings.
“The question is what can be done [to enforce enlistment now]… you are apparently saying put the ruling aside, that it’s not worthwhile to implement it.
“But what can you do — there is a ruling.”
Neta Oren, a representative for the Attorney General’s Office, rejected Fuchs’s claims that there were no effective social or economic sanctions that could be taken against ultra-Orthodox draft dodgers that did not require legislation.
She asserted that the attorney general had submitted proposals for sanctions made by professional government officials in relevant ministries that would pinch ultra-Orthodox households and thus lead to greater rates of enlistment from the community.
Questioning Oren, Justice Wilner asked her how the court’s orders could be best directed.
Oren replied that the attorney general believed a contempt of court order would be “complicated” but “appropriate,” and that the court could issue specific orders to specific and relevant officials in government ministries to have state benefits overseen by those ministries revoked from draft dodgers.
Wilner and Barak Erez criticized the Attorney General’s Office for not itself issuing such orders on the back of the court’s previous rulings, questioning why a new ruling was needed.
“There is a court ruling that says that financial benefits must not be given when there is draft evasion. Why do we need a special invitation for the government to act on the issue?” demanded Barak Erez.
Oren replied that “in another world” the court’s rulings to date would suffice, but she added, “Without concrete orders that will instruct every minister and every professional rank what is expected of them, these things will not be implemented.”
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High Court of Justice