As three families were getting the dreaded knock on their door Monday afternoon from IDF officers informing them that their sons had died in Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in the Knesset trying to work out a deal to pass the ever-elusive haredi conscription – or rather, exemption – bill.
The optics are not just troubling. They are perverse.
On the one hand, three more families were added to the growing list of those mourning their children, killed while fulfilling their duty to the state. On the other hand, Netanyahu was deeply engaged in political maneuvering to preserve a coalition dependent on parties that demanded tens of thousands of young men continue to be exempt from that very duty.
The haredi parties threatened to quit the government if it did not present a bill meeting their demands: a law enshrining a fundamental inequality by exempting haredi men from military service while their non-haredi Jewish and Druze peers are drafted.
Likud MK Yuli Edelstein, chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and the man tasked with advancing a bill on this matter, has said unequivocally he will only support legislation that genuinely mandates conscription – one that brings thousands of haredim into uniform, not one that provides a new legal fig leaf for continued evasion.
When both factions of United Torah Judaism saw the draft Edelstein was preparing, they recoiled and announced they would resign from the government – a resignation that will take effect on Thursday morning.
With UTJ gone, Netanyahu’s coalition will hold a fragile 61-59 majority. If Shas, the Sephardi haredi party, follows suit – as most expect – the government will lose its majority altogether and drop to only 50 seats.
That doesn’t mean the government will fall immediately. To trigger new elections, the Knesset must vote to dissolve itself, or Netanyahu must call for them. Neither is likely before the long summer recess set to begin next week.
But make no mistake, this is an issue that merits bringing down a government.
Beginning with the October 7 massacre, 893 soldiers have been killed, including 449 in Gaza, since the ground maneuver began three weeks later. Reservists are being called back repeatedly for months on end due to manpower shortages.
Demand against haredi draft is indefensible
Nevertheless, the haredi parties are demanding that haredi men and yeshiva students not be drafted – even now, even as the war continues, and even as the burden on others grows unbearable. That demand is indefensible.
This inequality – long a source of social tension – is now tipping into a national crisis.
The arguments have been aired countless times, and the outrage of the non-haredi public is well documented. But that outrage seems to bounce off the haredi political leadership, which is unwilling to accept that the country has changed fundamentally since October 7, 2023.
There is, however, an even more disturbing layer. The current government – sending soldiers and reservists to fight and die – is propped up by 18 MKs from haredi parties whose children and constituents overwhelmingly do not serve.
They are not paying the price in blood and toil for the decisions they help make, decisions that would not stand were it not for their votes. That is an ethical disgrace.
Edelstein is right to insist that any legislation must lead to genuine conscription. Netanyahu – whose decisions place hundreds of thousands of soldiers in harm’s way – must uphold that principle, not dilute it in a bid to keep his coalition afloat. To do otherwise would be a betrayal of those risking their lives for the state.
This is not a secondary issue. It will be central to the next election, which must be held by October 2026 but could come much sooner.
Netanyahu would be wise to get on the right side of it or risk losing Likud voters to other right-wing parties, such as Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu, which has made equal service a central part of its platform.
And the haredi parties would do well to step outside the echo chambers of Mea She’arim, Bnei Brak, and Beit Shemesh and listen to the fury rising from the rest of the country. The public’s patience is not just fraying; it is gone.
The IDF does not belong to one segment of society. The physical defense of the state cannot rest on the shoulders of some while others stand apart and watch. It is just plain wrong, and the day of reckoning for this injustice is long overdue.