Ultra-Orthodox (haredi) Housing Minister Yizhak Goldknopf is pressuring fellow haredi politicians to begin legislating a bill to disperse the Knesset as leverage to push the government to move forward with a bill to regulate haredi service in the IDF, a spokesperson for Goldknopf confirmed on Tuesday morning.
United Torah Judaism (UTJ), the Ashkenazi-haredi party that Goldknopf chairs, will convene on Tuesday afternoon in the Knesset to discuss its next steps.
The rabbinical leaders of UTJ’s Lithuanian branch, Degel Hatorah, will convene on Wednesday to decide whether or not to follow the more hawkish stance of UTJ’s Hassidic branch of led by Hassidut Gur, which Goldknopf represents.
According to Israeli law, if a bill to disperse the Knesset passes, an election is automatically called and must occur within 90 days.
The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee has been working on formulating the text of a bill, which will reach the committee in the coming weeks. However, this may not leave enough time for the bill proposal to pass into law by the end of the Knesset summer session in late July, in which case the current law, which requires that all eligible haredi men serve in the IDF, will continue to apply as is at least until October.
The bill proposal will likely include draft quotas from the haredi sector that will increase annually, eventually reaching 50% of each graduating class, as well as sanctions on individuals who ignore draft orders. Despite the fact that the previous legal exemption expired in June 2024, a vast majority of the approximately 24,000 draft orders to haredi men since then have been ignored.
IDF expects to fall short of haredi draftee goal
The IDF has already stated that it will not meet the goal it committed to in the High Court, of 4,800 haredi draftees in the 2024-2025 draft year, which will end on June 30.
Supporters have argued that the bill will lead to an immediate increase in the number of draftees and bring thousands more haredim into the army.
Critics, however, have countered that there is no guarantee that even with new sanctions, those who receive orders with the new law in place will actually respect them; and that there is no legal justification to enable 50% of haredim to continue being exempt from service, while secular and religious-Zionist Israelis do not enjoy the same privilege.
In a press conference ahead of his party’s weekly meeting on Tuesday, opposition leader MK Yair Lapid called on leading haredi rabbis to acknowledge that Netanyahu was “deceiving” them.
“I want to say from here to the great rabbis of Israel—to the Rebbe of Gur, to Rabbi [Dov] Lando, to Rabbi Moshe Hillel Hirsch, to Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef: Know that you are being deceived. Netanyahu knows that there will be no draft evasion law; he is just stalling to somehow get through the [Knesset] summer session,” Lapid said.
“All that interests him [Netanyahu] is remaining in power during his cross-examination in court. He is selling you myths and empty promises. He neither knows how nor can he pass the law you want,” Lapid said.
“What we are offering the ultra-Orthodox is what we are offering all the citizens of the country: a functioning government, personal security, tax reductions, lower prices, good relations with the world, and the opportunity to be part of the Israeli story,” the opposition leader said.
Jesus Christ is King
Comments are closed.