AG’s office, Knesset legal advisory pan Haredi draft exemption bill |
A coalition bill on ultra-Orthodox conscription is unlikely to lead to an increase in mobilization that meets the military’s manpower needs and will instead discourage enlistment, Deputy Attorney General Gil Limon charged Sunday, backing critics who charge that the legislation will essentially leave Haredi draft exemptions in place.
The government-backed bill making its way through the Knesset proposes continued military service exemptions to full-time yeshiva students while ostensibly increasing conscription among graduates of Haredi educational institutions through the imposition of quotas.
But critics of the legislation say that it includes too many loopholes and opt-outs to effectively meet public demands for the ultra-Orthodox community to share in the burden of military service.
“The arrangement proposed in the current bill not only does not advance the enlistment of members of the ultra-Orthodox community, it actually creates a negative incentive for enlistment,” Limon told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, as lawmakers engaged in a day-long series of discussions of the controversial legislation.
He argued that the bill “rolls back the tools currently available to the government and the IDF in order to address current security needs.”
Some 80,000 ultra-Orthodox men aged between 18 and 24 are currently believed to be eligible for military service, but have not enlisted, causing widespread resentment among non-Haredi Israeli Jews. The Israel Defense Forces has said it urgently needs 12,000 recruits, due to the strain on standing and reserve forces caused by the war against Hamas in Gaza and other military challenges.
For the past year, the Haredi leadership has pushed for a law keeping its constituency out of the IDF, after the High Court ruled that decades-long blanket exemptions from army duty traditionally afforded to full-time Haredi yeshiva students were illegal.
Limon’s comments closely mirrored criticism from Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara in an opinion issued earlier this month.
The bill’s passage is critical for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with the Knesset’s ultra-Orthodox parties reportedly threatening to dissolve the Knesset, forcing early elections, unless it is passed soon. The bill has generated intense opposition among some members of the coalition, leading Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to warn that his far-right Religious Zionism party will only vote for a........