On Tuesday, the High Court of Justice ruled that the government must draft ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students into the military ad there is no longer any legal framework to continue the decades-long practice of granting them blanket exemptions from army service.
The court ruled that a government decision from June 2023 instructing the army not to start drafting eligible Haredi men after the law allowing for blanket military service exemptions expired was illegal, and that the government must therefore actively work to conscript ultra-Orthodox recruits to the IDF.
The justices did, however, state that they were not telling the state how many Haredi yeshiva students to draft, indicating that the process could be gradual, though they warned the government that the process must now begin.
The court ruling also permanently barred the state from funding ultra-Orthodox yeshivas for students who are studying in them in lieu of military service, asserting that those funds were bound up in the terms of the IDF service exemptions which now no longer exist.
The High Court’s decision means that after decades of political and societal controversy and strife over the issue, there will be a legal obligation for young Haredi men to join their Jewish Israeli comrades and serve in the military.
This new reality has come about largely due to the confluence of two major events the expiration of the original law allowing for blanket service exemptions and the cataclysmic October 7 Hamas attack and its aftermath, which threw into sharp relief the IDF’s need for more manpower.
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