An expanded panel of five Supreme Court justices convened on Wednesday to hear petitions challenging the government’s failure to enforce military conscription among haredi (ultra-Orthodox) yeshiva students.
The panel – Deputy Chief Justice Noam Sohlberg and justices Daphne Barak-Erez, David Mintz, Yael Willner, and Ofer Grosskopf – addressed petitions accusing the state of disregarding a landmark June 2024 HCJ ruling that struck down long-standing exemptions for haredi men from mandatory military service.
A representative of the legal advisory explained to the panel that, from July 2026, there won’t be any limitation on the side of the army when it comes to accepting haredi draftees.
“We want soldiers, not inmates,” Sohlberg said, succinctly summarizing the court’s basis for its challenges to the government: that it explain why, if the army has the capacity to absorb so many of the 80,000 eligible haredi young men, it does not apply more pressure to provide the recruits – especially during wartime.
“The need is acute!” charged Willner.
The government’s position on Wednesday – representing both the army and the state – was that more cooperation is needed by all of the players to enforce financial sanctions; the argument was that the sanctions that can be used are being used.
Concerns on IDF readiness
The judges, however, stood on the apparent gaps between the army’s readiness, the legal advisory, and the government’s practice and effective enforcement. The state’s representative explained that the legal advisory has already proposed such plans.
Sohlberg pressed the government’s representatives: “The state is asking that the court do absolutely nothing when faced with a systemic violation of the law as it exists.”
One of the representatives, speaking specifically for the yeshivot under threat, suggested that the court avoid issuing “pointless orders,” arguing that these “shortcuts” – the sanctions, the travel bans, and so on – are measures that harm the entire public, not just the haredi sector, and that the court should instead return the issue to the government and civil society.
Sohlberg responded, “This has been an issue of public concern since 1948.”
Attorney Eliad Shraga, who leads the Movement for Quality Government in Israel (MQG), one of the petitioners, said, “The state does whatever it wants. We are about to be landed with a new exemption law, and this court has approved 24 extensions since we petitioned a year and a half ago!”
The overall sense from the panel to the government was that even if things are being done by the book in terms of the order of consequences and sanctions, the question is much larger than the answers being given.
In a unanimous decision in June, a nine-justice bench determined that the government could no longer exempt haredi yeshiva students from service, nor continue state funding for yeshivas and kollels whose students lacked a valid exemption. The justices sharply criticized the government for acting unlawfully after the law’s expiration, emphasizing that selective enforcement of conscription violates the principle of equality before the law.
Following months of inaction, the court in April issued a conditional order requiring the government to explain why it was not sending conscription orders to eligible yeshiva students and why those who received summonses were not facing effective sanctions.
Petitions were then filed by MQG, Israel Hofsheet (“Free Israel”), and Ima Era (“Awake Mother”), demanding immediate enforcement of the draft law. They said the government and the IDF failed to implement the 2024 judgment and continued to avoid conscripting tens of thousands of yeshiva students.
Attorney Gilad Barnea, representing Ima Era – a coalition of mothers and female partners of soldiers – suggested that the court on Wednesday take a more active role to “create the optimal conditions to increase haredi enlistment.”
The petitioners cited new state data showing ultra-Orthodox enlistment rates remain extremely low, despite wartime manpower shortages.
Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara has repeatedly urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to act on the court’s ruling.
In a letter sent earlier this month – following a similar warning in July – she stated that the government must take immediate enforcement steps, especially those not requiring new legislation, to end what she called “a serious breach of equality that cannot be legally justified.”
In its formal response to the court, the state acknowledged that haredi enlistment remains minimal and that no broad sanctions have been imposed. The government cited “social sensitivity” and ongoing coalition negotiations toward a legislative framework as reasons for its restraint.
However, many legal experts have noted that no new law currently authorizes exemptions, and the court’s 2024 decision leaves no legal basis for non-enforcement.
MQG’s Shraga drew attention to the timing: late Tuesday night and throughout Wednesday, a new exemption law was being put together and presented to the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee – to much criticism from across the political spectrum. The law is widely seen as the government’s last-ditch effort to prevent the coalition from crumbling if the haredi parties withdraw.
A decision enforcing mass conscription of eligible haredim could destabilize the governing coalition, whose ultra-Orthodox parties view compulsory service as an existential threat to their religious way of life.
Several haredi men – reportedly members of the extremist Peleg Yerushalmi faction – interrupted the proceedings, shouting at the judges, “We are not afraid of sanctions! We will die rather than enlist!”
The intrusions began around 10 a.m. and recurred at roughly 10-minute intervals as the state’s representatives delivered their arguments. They were all removed by court security.