eretz
IDFblog.com
To Serve Or Not?
LOUIS FINKELMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Despite no
policy change,
haredi protests
bring IDF
conscription
issue up again.
ABOVE: Despite recent
protests by anti-Zionist Satmar
adherents, nationalist-religious
men do serve in the IDF. In
this 2014 photo, an ultra-
Orthodox Jewish soldier, part
of the Defenders of the Negev
battalion, prays. In February
2017, the IDF swore in its first
all-haredi paratrooper unit.
S
University associate professor, expresses
ome 20,000 people took part in a
demonstration on June 11 in Brooklyn skepticism about any chance for changes:
“The government is deadlocked by an
against conscripting yeshivah stu-
dents into the Israel Defense Forces. Haredi unstable coalition that needs the unwaver-
ing support of religious parties.”
( fervently Orthodox) activists crowded
University of Michigan political sci-
into the Barclays Center to hear speeches
in Yiddish, echoing similar demonstrations ence professor Zvi Gitelman answers even
more decisively by outlining three
that took place in Jerusalem in
reasons he sees no prospects for
recent weeks.
change.
Meanwhile, in Beit Shemesh in
“The Israeli army no longer needs
Israel, opponents of the draft have
the manpower,” he said. “After
held ongoing protests at the home
850,000 Jews immigrated from the
of Yaakov Roshi, the IDF officer
former Soviet Union, along with
who deals with yeshivah students.
another 340,000 non-Jews, the army
These demonstrations would
had its manpower needs supplied.
seem a response to political
Zvi Gitelman
The nature of warfare has changed
attempts to change the current
too, significantly lowering man-
policy allowing young men to
power needs
defer conscription as long as they
“Second, young haredi men gen-
continue to study Torah full time.
erally are ignorant of history, math,
Well, not actually: The most recent
science, literature and so would
effort to change draft policy fiz-
not immediately be an asset to the
zled three years ago, and observers
military. The one virtue they have is
of Israeli politics see no movement
that they proverbially know how to
to reopen the issue.
study hard.
Howard Lupovitch, director
“Third, the haredi population
of the Cohn-Haddow Center for
Howard Lupovitch
constitutes a growing percentage
Judaic Studies and a Wayne State
of the Israeli Jewish population,” Gitelman
said. “Coalitions will likely continue to
depend on haredi parties in the future.
Prime Minister Netanyahu shows no
interest in alienating the haredi parties in
the short run; he keeps looking over his
shoulder at them, anticipating their help in
future elections.”
EXEMPTION HISTORY
How did the exemption arise? The practice
of exempting yeshivah students from the
military draft began before the declaration
of independence. On March 9, 1948, the
chief of staff, Israeli Galili, declared that
the Haganah (pre-state precursor of the
IDF) would draft all men and all women,
but not yeshivah students.
According to Dr. Moshe Sokolov, a pro-
fessor at Yeshiva University in New York
City, at the start of the war of indepen-
dence in 1948, the exemption applied to
approximately 400 students, about .07 per-
cent of the Jewish population.
Once the state was established, Rabbi
Isaac Herzog, the first Ashkenazi chief
rabbi of Israel, recommended continuing
the exemption because, after the murder
continued on page 24
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June 22 • 2017
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