The necessity to draft ultra-Orthodox (haredi) Israelis into the IDF is acute, and the lack of personnel is being felt in combat units on the ground, Otniel Hesder Yeshiva president Rabbi Benny Kalmanzon said in a Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense (FADC) committee meeting on Tuesday.
Kalmanzon said that the families of officers and reservists who had graduated from his yeshiva were “falling apart,” and that some combat officers were even forced to leave their units in order to save their marriages. In one case, a platoon sergeant took over as company commander after the latter was forced to return home, he said.
Hesder yeshivot, including Otniel, are institutions where students spend a number of years in religious studies and then enter the IDF. Kalmanzon’s oldest son, Elchanan, was killed in a firefight on October 7, 2023, after traveling to Kibbutz Be’eri with his brother and nephew to attempt to save members of the kibbutz.
Kalmanzon added in the committee that it was in the political interest of the Religious Zionist Party, who are part of the coalition, to insist on drafting large numbers of haredim in order to relieve the burden of service from many of their constituents.
The rabbi also requested that the opposition parties support a significant haredi draft, even if it meant giving up on the opportunity to bring down the government.
The Otniel yeshiva president’s comments came during an FADC committee meeting on the haredi draft bill proposal. While the meeting dealt with specific definitions of haredim as part of quota requirement, a number of Yesh Atid MKs questioned why there needed to be quotas in the first place.
A quota of haredim, or all should enlist?
Rather than a quota of haredim who must enlist in the IDF every year, the bill’s working assumption should be that all haredim must enlist, and a percentage of exemplary students could receive exemptions, they argued.
The MKs at the meeting also discussed possible sanctions on individuals who avoid the draft and on yeshivot who do not meet the quota.
Deputy Attorney-General Gil Limon said regarding the sanctions on yeshivot, “The effectiveness of the sanctions will determine whether this law becomes real or not. A law can look very good, but if there are no tools to achieve the goals of the law, it will become a dead letter in the law book. In order for it to be effective, the sanctions must impact the individual.”
He said that this needs to be called by its name: “It is not a sanction; it is a deprivation of benefits. Currently, taking money does not harm the individual but only the institution. The law spoke in 2022 about a gradual recruitment and integration of haredim into the army, but we are no longer there, the situation has changed, and we need a sharp recruitment. After the empirical experiment according to the Supreme Court order, we see 0% recruitment, which proves that it does not work,” Limon said.
If this law comes into effect, we are essentially restoring full funding to yeshivas, the deputy attorney-general said. “Additionally, everyone faces the prisoner’s dilemma, which doesn’t affect the individual at all. If we want to reach personal sanctions, perhaps we should discuss them first and not the institutional ones.
“We propose personal sanctions against the individual, which require a conscription order with a date,” he said. “Those who do not meet the conscription date, like everyone else under the conscription obligation, face the sanction – a travel ban, arrest by the Military Police, etc. We believe that the community conscription obligation model lacks effective foundation. If there is a version that includes personal sanctions, we think it should be discussed first.”