Israel’s Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the army must begin recruiting ultra-Orthodox Jewish men, a decision that threatened to divide Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government amid the Gaza war.
In a unanimous decision, a panel of nine judges found that there was no legal basis for the military exemption long granted to ultra-Orthodox religious students. Without a law distinguishing between seminarians and other military-age men, the court ruled, the country’s proposed mandatory laws must apply equally to the ultra-Orthodox minority.
In a country where military service is compulsory for most Israeli Jews, both men and women, the exemption granted to the ultra-Orthodox has long sparked resentment. But anger over the group’s special treatment has grown as the Gaza war enters its ninth month, forcing tens of thousands of reservists to carry out multiple missions and costing hundreds of soldiers their lives.
“Nowadays, in the midst of a difficult war, the burden of these inequalities is more acute than ever – and necessitates the search for a lasting solution to this problem,” the Supreme Court said in its ruling.
The move threatens to widen one of the most painful divisions in Israeli society, pitting secular Jews against the ultra-Orthodox, who say their religious studies are as essential and protective as the military. It also exposed the fault lines within Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition, which depends on the support of two ultra-Orthodox parties that oppose the conscription of their voters, even as more Israelis are killed and injured in Gaza.
Israeli courts have already ruled against this exemption, including the Supreme Court. decisions in 1998, 2012 And 2017. The highest court has repeatedly warned the government that to pursue this policy, it must be enshrined in law – even though this law would be subject to constitutional challenges, as previous ones were – while also giving the government the time to develop legislation.
But for the seven years since the last law was repealed, successive Israeli governments have dragged their feet in drafting new legislation. In 2023, the law finally reached its expiration date, leading the Israeli government to order the military not to enlist the ultra-Orthodox while lawmakers worked on an exemption.
On Tuesday, the court indicated that its patience had finally run out, setting aside the order as illegal. He did not set a timetable for when the military will need to begin enlisting tens of thousands of military-age religious students. Such a move would likely pose an enormous logistical and political challenge, and would face massive resistance from the ultra-Orthodox community.
Gali Baharav-Miara, Israel’s attorney general, in a letter to government officials on Tuesday, said the army had committed to recruiting at least 3,000 ultra-Orthodox religious students – out of more than 60,000 in age of service – in the coming year. She noted that this number would fall far short of closing the military service gap between the ultra-Orthodox community and other Israeli Jews.
Instead, the ruling included a way to pressure the ultra-Orthodox into accepting the court’s ruling: suspending millions of dollars in government subsidies to religious schools, or yeshivas, that previously supported students exempted, dealing a blow to the country’s revered institutions. the heart of the ultra-Orthodox community.
The court’s decision jeopardizes Mr. Netanyahu’s fragile coalition, which includes secular members opposed to the exemption and ultra-Orthodox parties that support it. The breakup of either group could lead to the collapse of the government and the calling of new elections, at a time when popular support for the government is at an all-time low. The opposition in the Israeli Parliament largely wants to end the exemption.
The attacks carried out by Hamas on October 7 – which sparked the eight-month war in Gaza – have somewhat softened the ultra-Orthodox stance on conscription, with some leaders saying those who could not study the scriptures should go to the ‘army.
“Yet the most the ultra-Orthodox community is willing to give is far less than what the general Israeli public is willing to accept,” said Israel Cohen, a commentator for Kol Barama, an ultra-Orthodox radio station.
But ultra-Orthodox parties, which have few acceptable options, may not be eager to bring down Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition, he said. “They don’t see an alternative, so they’ll try to make this work as long as they can,” Mr. Cohen said. “They will compromise more than they could have a year ago to try to preserve the government. »
For now, the military must develop a plan that can accommodate thousands of soldiers opposed to military service and whose insularity and traditions are at odds with a modern fighting force.
The court’s ruling creates a “gaping political wound at the heart of the coalition” that Mr. Netanyahu must now urgently address, said Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem-based think tank. .
In a statement, Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party criticized the Supreme Court for issuing the ruling as the government considered legislation that would make the case obsolete. The government’s proposed law, the party said, would increase the number of ultra-Orthodox conscripts while recognizing the importance of religious studies.
It was unclear whether Mr. Netanyahu’s proposal would ultimately stand up to judicial scrutiny. But if passed by Parliament, a new law could face several years of legal challenges, buying the government additional time, Mr. Plesner said.
The Supreme Court’s decision Tuesday immediately sparked outrage among ultra-Orthodox politicians. Many ultra-Orthodox view military service as a gateway to assimilation into a secular Israeli society that would lead young people to stray from a way of life guided by the Torah, the Jewish scriptures.
“The State of Israel was created to be the home of the Jewish people, for whom the Torah is the foundation of their existence. The Holy Torah will prevail,” Yitzhak Goldknopf, an ultra-Orthodox government minister, said in a statement Monday.
After the October 7 attack by Hamas on southern Israel, Israelis united in the determination to fight back. But as thousands of reserve troops were called up for second and third missions in Gaza, fault lines within Israeli society quickly resurfaced.
Some Israeli analysts warn that the war could spread to other fronts in the West Bank and the northern border with Lebanon, leading the government to call for more conscripts and further strain relations between secular and ultra-Jewish orthodox.
Many Israelis – secular, religious and ultra-Orthodox – already see the issue of the project as just one skirmish in a broader cultural battle over the country’s increasingly uncertain future.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews were exempted from military service since the founding of Israel in 1948, when the country’s leaders promised them autonomy in exchange for their support for the creation of a largely secular state. At the time, there were only a few hundred yeshiva students.
The ultra-Orthodox now number more than a million people, or about 13% of the Israeli population. They wield considerable political influence and their elected leaders have become kingmakers, appearing in most of Israel’s coalition governments.
But as the ultra-Orthodox grew in power, so did anger over their failure to join the military and their relatively small contribution to the economy. In 2019, Avigdor Lieberman, a former ally of Mr. Netanyahu, rejected his offer to join a coalition that would legislate the proposed exemption for the ultra-Orthodox. That decision helped send Israel into repeat elections — five in four years.
Last year, after Mr. Netanyahu returned to power at the head of his current coalition, he sought to push through a plan to weaken the country’s justice system, sparking mass protests. For the ultra-Orthodox, who supported the judicial overhaul, a major motivation was to ensure that the Supreme Court could no longer hinder their ability to avoid the plan.
Ron Scherf, a lieutenant colonel in the Israeli reserve, said many soldiers were frustrated by having to serve multiple tours of duty during the war, even though ultra-Orthodox Israelis are “never called up in the first place.”
An activist with Brothers in Arms, a group of reserve soldiers opposed to Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Scherf asked: “How can Israel simply allow an entire community to be exempt from its civic duties?
Gabby Sobelman, Jonathan Reiss And Myra Noveck reports contributed.
