NEWS STORY: Israeli court rejects widespread military exemptions for religious youths

c. 1998 Religion News Service JERUSALEM _ In a historic decision, Israel’s Supreme Court on Wednesday (Dec. 9) ordered the government to stop granting blanket draft exemptions to tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students. In a unanimous decision, the court said legislation is needed to deal with the issue. Because of overwhelming political opposition […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

JERUSALEM _ In a historic decision, Israel’s Supreme Court on Wednesday (Dec. 9) ordered the government to stop granting blanket draft exemptions to tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students.

In a unanimous decision, the court said legislation is needed to deal with the issue. Because of overwhelming political opposition to the exemptions, any such legislation would likely result in many of the yeshiva students becoming subject to Israel’s military draft.


The precedent-setting decision is likely to have a far-reaching impact on Israel’s delicate religious-secular balance of power.

It is also likely to exacerbate the dispute between religious and secular leaders over the Supreme Court’s right to rule at all on controversial religious issues _ such as who controls conversions to Judaism and attempts by liberal Jewish movements to gain full state recognition.

The court gave the government a year to implement its ruling, which could affect an estimated 50,000 to 80,000 ultra-Orthodox young men currently studying in yeshivas, or religious schools, with draft exemptions.

Ultra-Orthodox leaders vowed to battle the decision by pushing for passage of legislation that would enshrine the exemptions into law. Should the Knesset, or Israeli parliament, fail to pass such a bill, ultra-Orthodox youths would go to prison or leave the country rather than enter the military, the leaders added.”If there is, God forbid, a decision by the Knesset or the Supreme Court to draft anyone, we will have no choice but to leave the country,”said Moshe Gafni, a leader of Torah Judaism, an ultra-Orthodox political party.”After suffering the (medieval) Inquisition, and centuries of persecution for studying Torah, now we have to face this in the Jewish state,”added Avraham Lazer, a Knesset member representing Agudath Israel, another ultra-Orthodox party.

In Israel’s fractious parliamentary political system, ultra-Orthodox parties wield political power beyond their community’s size, which has been estimated at less than 20 percent of Israel’s Jewish population. Despite their power, it would be difficult for ultra-Orthodox politicians to muscle passage of a law favorable to them through the Knesset because most Israelis _ secular and religious _ serve in the army.

Only ultra-Orthodox Jews seek to avoid the military, arguing religious studies are at least as important and that army service would subject the community’s young men to corrupting influences. But Israelis, who hold the military in high esteem and see it as a guarantor of their physical security, have become generally fed up with the growing number of ultra-Orthodox exemptions.

Even the two centrist Orthodox members of the 11-member Supreme Court joined in Wednesday’s decision _ a sign of how little support the exemptions have in Israeli society.”The Torah says `justice, justice shall you pursue.’ Well justice is finally pursuing the yeshiva boys,”Iris Mizrachi, a popular Israeli social commentator, said on Israel Radio. “He who doesn’t serve in the army, and doesn’t contribute to the society or the economy, has in effect already abandoned the homeland,”secular politician Yossi Sarid said in response to the ultra-Orthodox threats to leave Israel en masse.


Yeshiva students were originally granted blanket exemptions from military service in the 1950s by Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. The prime minister did so soon after the European yeshiva world had been virtually wiped out by the Holocaust and secular Zionists were seeking the support of religious Jews for the new state of Israel.

Today, the ultra-Orthodox have the highest birth rate among any segment of Israel’s Jewish population. Each year, ultra-Orthodox youths account for roughly 10 percent of Israel’s draft-age 18-year-olds.

Arab youths, who today constitute about 21 percent of the annual draft roster, are the only other group to receive a blanket exemption _ although members of the Arab Druse sect are drafted for service and many Arab Bedouin also serve, along with a few Arab volunteers.

About 10 percent of Jewish youths who are not ultra-Orthodox receive exemptions for health or other reasons.

Since the 1970s, opponents of the exemptions for yeshiva students had failed in attempts to get the Supreme Court to end the practice. Their fifth appeal proved successful.

This latest case was championed by two liberal Knesset members, Haim Oron and Amnon Rubenstein, who argued that the swelling number of draft exemptions violated basic principles of social equity.


Chief Justice Aharon Barak agreed.”A deep split has been created in Israeli society, with a growing feeling of inequality,”Barak wrote in the court’s decision.

The ultra-Orthodox youths who avoid service also constitute a growing social problem within Israel, the justices noted. After receiving military exemptions, most religious students become dependent on publicly funded yeshiva stipends even as they marry and begin raising large families. Under terms of the exemptions, they are barred from working.

The result is both widespread poverty, ultra-Orthodox dependence on government handouts and growing corruption within the system; many students are enrolled in yeshivas in name only and work illegally.

IR END FLETCHER

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