Israel’s Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the military must begin recruiting ultra-Orthodox Jewish men, a decision that threatened to split Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government amid the war in Gaza.
In a unanimous decision, nine justices held that there was no legal basis for the military exemption long granted to many ultra-Orthodox religious students. Given the absence of a law distinguishing between seminarians and other men of draft age, the court ruled, the country’s conscription laws should apply similarly to the ultra-Orthodox minority.
In a country where military service is mandatory for most Jewish men and women, the exemption for the ultra-Orthodox has long been a bone of contention for secular Israelis. But anger over the group’s special treatment has grown as the war in Gaza drags into its ninth month, requiring tens of thousands of reservists to serve in multiple missions and costing the lives of hundreds of soldiers.
“Today, in the midst of a difficult war, the burden of that inequality is more acute than ever and requires the advancement of a sustainable solution to this issue,” the Supreme Court justices wrote in their ruling.
The court’s ruling pits secular Jews against ultra-Orthodox Jews, who say their study of Scripture is as essential as the military in defending Israel. It also exposes flaws in Netanyahu’s coalition, which relies on support from two ultra-Orthodox parties amid the country’s deadliest war in decades.
Netanyahu has called for legislation that would generally maintain the exemption for religious students. But if he goes ahead with the plan, other members of his government could break ranks amid growing public anger over the government’s strategy for the war in Gaza.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews have been exempt from military service since Israel’s founding in 1948, when the country’s leaders promised them autonomy in exchange for their support in creating a largely secular state. In addition to being exempt from conscription, the ultra-Orthodox, known in Hebrew as haredim, can administer their own educational system.
The Supreme Court also took aim at that system in its ruling, saying the government could no longer transfer subsidies to religious schools, or yeshivas, that enrolled draft-age students whose exemptions were no longer legal.
The decision immediately sparked outrage among ultra-Orthodox politicians, who vowed to oppose it.
“The State of Israel was established to be a home for the Jewish people, for whom the Torah is the basis of their existence. The Holy Torah will prevail,” Yitzhak Goldknopf, an ultra-Orthodox minister, said in a statement on Monday.
About 1,000 haredi men currently serve voluntarily in the military – less than 1 percent of all soldiers – but the Hamas-led attack on October 7 appears to spark a greater sense of shared destiny with Israelis in general among some segments of the public. Haredi According to military statistics, more than 2,000 haredim tried to join the army in the first 10 weeks of the war.
Gabby Sobelman and Myra Noveck contributed reporting.
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