Israel issues more than 1,000 arrest warrants for ultra-Orthodox draft avoiders

By Tamar Michaelis

Israel’s military has issued 1,126 arrest warrants for ultra-Orthodox conscripts who have not responded to drafting orders, in a move likely to fuel discontent over a controversial decision to remove their decades-long exemption from service.

Brig. Gen. Shay Tayeb announced the arrest warrants to a parliamentary committee Tuesday, saying that conscripts who had ignored their orders would initially be called and reminded of their duty.

Those who continued not to cooperate, he said, would be summoned immediately or risk being declared a draft dodger – after which they would be banned from foreign travel and risk arrest if stopped by police.

The move is likely to fuel the discontent that has roiled the country since a Supreme Court ruling in June that ultra-Orthodox Jews could not be exempt from military service, as they have been since the founding of Israel.

Israel has turned to enlisting ultra-Orthodox (or Haredi) Jews of draft age after more than a year of war in Gaza and a ground operation in Lebanon that has strained its military, but the move has been deeply unpopular with a community on whose support Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu relies for his governing coalition.

Since the Supreme Court ruling, Israeli authorities have sent out 3,000 draft orders to ultra-Orthodox Jews and new Defense Minister Israel Katz said last week he would send out an additional 7,000 orders that were approved by his predecessor Yoav Gallant before he was fired two weeks ago.

However, in his comments Tuesday, Brig. Gen. Tayib cautioned that even 10,000 ultra-Orthodox conscripts might not be enough.

“The IDF is in need of soldiers. We touched on the figure of 10,000, but this isn’t a stable figure because we have casualties unfortunately,” he said.

On Tuesday, Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid called on Katz to “act immediately” to issue the additional draft orders and to “expand the enforcement towards those who didn’t show up.”

“This is a test revealing who stands with the combat troops and who stands with the draft dodgers,” he posted on X.

‘Death rather than draft’

Anger had been simmering among the ultra-Orthodox community even before the news of the arrest warrants.

On Sunday, scuffles broke out between police and ultra-Orthodox protesters in Bnei Brak, east of Tel Aviv. Reuters footage shows protesters holding signs reading: “It is better to die a religious Jew than to live as a secular Jew” and “Death rather than draft.”

“Our youth are demonstrating because the Israeli government wants to (recruit) our religious people to the army,” said protester Yona Kaye.

“Our history is full of Jews who have given up their lives in order to remain religious,” Kaye added. “We will die. We will stay extended periods of time in jail but not go to the Israeli army, which means to become irreligious.”

Such protests highlight a fault line in Israeli society between ultra-Orthodox Jews and other Israelis, many of whom believe that all Jewish citizens should serve in the military, especially during wartime.

Many Haredi men spend much of their early lives out of the workforce, instead studying at religious schools known as yeshivas that are partly funded through government subsidies.

For many Haredis, the idea that they would be pulled from studying scripture and drafted into Israel’s military is simply out of the question.

An arrangement made during Israel’s founding exempted several hundred Haredi men from conscription. However, the community has since grown exponentially, allowing tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox men to now avoid the draft.

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