IDF, Attorney General & Bank of Israel warn against gov't-backed proposal for new IDF Draft Law

As the Knesset Defense Committee continues debating the controversial latest formulation for the government-backed IDF Draft Law, numerous actors have come out with strong criticism of the proposed law this week, despite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s support.

On Monday, Netanyahu publicly defended the bill for the first time, telling the Knesset it would be “the beginning of a historic process to integrate Haredim into the IDF,” while noting that enlistment numbers would be “three to four times higher” than those proposed by the former government led by then-prime minister Naftali Bennett and current Opposition Leader Yair Lapid.

The new draft was presented after weeks-long negotiations with the ultra-Orthodox parties, but still doesn’t have their full support as the United Torah Judaism party’s Degel HaTorah and Agudat Yisrael factions are split over it.

In addition, several lawmakers in Netanyahu’s Likud party and the Religious Zionism Party have also voiced disagreements.

According to the current proposal by committee chairman Boaz Bismuth, military service exemptions for full-time yeshiva students would continue, but conscription numbers among graduates of Haredi schools would be raised while allowing up to 10% of the enlistment targets to be filled by those serving in other security-related agencies, not the IDF.

On Tuesday, an IDF representative testified to the Defense Committee that the military urgently needs more combat troops, noting that allowing Haredis to serve in civilian services, even if they are security-related like the Mossad or Shin Bet, doesn’t help the IDF.

He also rejected an often-heard claim that the IDF isn’t prepared to meet the special needs of large numbers of new Haredi conscripts.

The next day, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara issued a legal position paper arguing that the new draft would, in fact, disincentivize recruitment rather than increase it, by removing available sanctions against draft dodgers to enforce the enlistment.

The bill “anchors in the long term the inequality between the communities that perform [military] service and the communities that do not,” wrote Baharav-Miara.

While it would restore currently blocked funds for Haredi schools and cancel standing draft orders for tens of thousands of men, the current proposal doesn’t “include arrangements that would advance urgent security needs as presented by the army, or reduce the burden on the reserve force, and it does not provide state and military bodies with effective tools to immediately enforce the draft obligation,” she wrote.

Baharav-Miara’s criticism was swiftly denied by Bismuth and Haredi leaders. The Shas party said the A-G’s legal opinion was meant “to deal a blow to the Torah world” and through its “blatant political tone” revealed her true goal of “toppling the right-wing government and preventing her dismissal.”

Meanwhile, the Bank of Israel also weighed in on the controversial discussions, stating that the current formulation of the proposed bill is “deficient in a way that will not result in the recruitment of Haredim that meets security needs while reducing economic costs.”

The bank argues that the recruitment of 20,000 Haredi men could alleviate the annual cost to Israel’s economy caused by mass reserve duty by at least NIS 9 billion.

One IDF reservist leaving his job for one month is costing the economy NIS 38,000, the bank said, explaining this included the “immediate cost of lost productivity” and “future harm to productivity growth as a result of loss of experience and/or promotion at work.”

“In contrast, the economic cost of recruiting a young Haredi for compulsory service is very low, because in most cases conscription does not replace participation in the labor market,” the bank noted.

“The Bank of Israel is essentially saying that continuing to advance the draft exemption for thousands of Haredi youths has a destructive impact on the Israeli economy,” Opposition Leader Lapid agreed.

“We will not allow this law to pass. We will not allow the cost of living to continue to rise and the burden on the working and serving public to increase,” he vowed.

While the strong disagreement from the opposition parties was to be expected, the current draft continues to receive pushback from within the coalition as well.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel (Likud) on Wednesday completed a three-day protest march to Jerusalem to protest the bill. “The current draft law is bad for the economy, it erodes social cohesion, and worst of all, it endangers the security of the state,” she told the Jerusalem Post.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s far-right Religious Zionism party denied reports that it had agreed to support the bill on Wednesday, stating that it would only “vote only for a law that will bring about real and rapid enlistment of Haredim into the IDF, in order to meet Israel’s security needs and ease the burden on the fighters and their families.”

Faction members and numerous heads of religious schools had convened on Tuesday to discuss the bill. The party’s voter base of national-religious Jews is strongly supportive of combining a religious lifestyle with army service, and is overrepresented in combat positions in the army.

Last week, party member and Immigration Minister Ofir Sofer had vowed to vote against the “shameful law” even if it cost him his cabinet position.

Lawmakers of the Haredi Shas Party, meanwhile visited conducted a solidarity visit to yeshiva students imprisoned for dodging their draft orders.

The party said that MKs Yoav Ben-Tzur and Uriel Buso updated the yeshiva students on its efforts “to secure their release and to advance legislation in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee to regulate their status.”

“In the Jewish state, yeshiva students will not be arrested for studying Torah. The Shas movement… stands as a wall for the yeshiva students and works with all its strength to fortify and strengthen the Torah world even in these difficult days.”

But even the Haredi community is not united in support of the bill, as an editorial by a Haredi newspaper affiliated with the influential Ger Hasidic Rabbinic dynasty warned it would set a “dangerous precedent” by giving the defense minister the power to revoke the status of yeshiva schools if enlistment targets are not met.

The Hasidic movement, represented by the Agudat Yisrael faction of UTJ, reportedly continues to be split, and its leading Rabbis are negotiating to find a unified position.