A full, extended nine-judge panel of the High Court of Justice on Tuesday ordered a full draft of haredim into the IDF and freezing all funds for institutions that do not comply starting April 1.
The blockbuster ruling could lead to new elections or, if not, a change in the political landscape on the issue of haredim in the IDF.
If the government and Knesset have been working slowly on the issue for months and years, hoping to stall a crisis, the pressure on haredi MKs and the government to arrive at a solution to restore their funding just jumped significantly.
Curiously, the High Court’s decision seemed to apply immediately, though its April ruling had left room for a delay to some fund freezing until August 8.
At a hearing earlier in June, the justices had come out swinging.
Part of what had been so surprising about the hearing was that three of the most conservative voices – Justices Noam Sohlberg, Alex Stein, and Yael Wilner – were among the roughest and most aggressive critics of the government.
Inside the court hearing
Sohlberg was furious that the IDF has offered as a minimum initial measure to take in 3,000 haredim out of over 60,000 eligible draftees over the course of the 2024 recruitment class, and that the government even refused this.
Stein and Wilner laid waste to the government’s legal claims that mid-level IDF officers could have wide discretion to give broad exemptions to haredim from military service, even beyond specific individual extreme extenuating circumstances.
In rare moments, one could tell that the justices were emotionally disturbed by the idea that during an ongoing Israel-Hamas war, which has taken the lives of around 1,500 Israelis, haredim still feel that asking them to do the same service is oppression.
When a haredi man at the hearing vowed that the ultra-Orthodox he knew would rather die than be drafted, it seemed to ring hollower with the justices mid-war than in the past.
If, in the past, such statements had a shock value, which made most Israelis who do serve in the IDF hold their heads in shock and decide to move on because the difficulty of negotiating with such a stubborn sector of the country was too great, the war seemed to have changed the atmosphere in the court building.
In comical moments, Acting Chief Justice Uzi Vogelman (“acting” because Justice Minister Yariv Levin has blocked Yitzhak Amit from taking office since October 2023) told the government’s lawyer that in trying to sound coherent and reasonable, he had essentially adopted the arguments of both Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara and the NGOs who brought the petition to draft haredim.
There seemed to be no question where the court was going with this – only how far.
In late March, the court froze one-third of some government-sponsored funds for the around-1,750 haredi yeshivot (seminaries). However, this did not impact the vast majority of the over 60,000 haredim in play for IDF or national service, only a portion of the recent draft class.
It also did not impact significant non-government funds that the haredi institutions raise.
While Haredi advocates have talked about the reduction in funds as being a life and death issue, there has not seemed to be any evident push by their Knesset officials to reach a new compromise either in the government or in Knesset hearings on the issue, which started last week, but with no noticeable progress.
The haredi political parties seemed to have judged that most of their government funding would not be touched earlier than August or Tuesday’s ruling.
The haredim also knew that they could somewhat freeze the current situation by going to new elections.
In early June, it seemed like the High Court was leaning toward ordering the government and the IDF to draft a minimum of 3,000 new haredi IDF recruits immediately.
This would not be insignificant, but it would still be less than 25% of the current haredi recruitment class and would not touch any older classes.
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