We have written before about Israel’s long-deferred crisis over Haredi military service. Now the issue returns to the Knesset — not as an act of responsibility, but as an effort by the governing coalition to evade court orders and placate its Haredi partners. In a time of war, legislating avoidance rather than duty is an embarrassment.
Israel can no longer deny a basic truth: The country cannot defend itself if a rapidly growing sector remains permanently exempt from defending it. The Bismuth bill pretends to solve the problem but instead entrenches it.
Rather than meeting the Israel Defense Forces’ acute manpower needs, it offers political survival for the coalition and another escape route for the Haredi parties.
The stakes are unmistakable. Israel is fighting a war, its reserve units are depleted and the IDF says it needs 12,000 additional soldiers simply to sustain operations. Yet Haredi enlistment remains stuck at roughly 1,000 a year — an untenable baseline the bill does nothing to change.
Supporters tout “over 30,000” Haredi recruits by 2030, but the figure is padded by folding in civilian placements and desk jobs the IDF does not urgently need.
It is inflated further by redefining who counts as Haredi, sweeping in anyone who once attended a Haredi school, including men who left the community years ago and would have enlisted anyway. Nothing in the bill explains how a stagnant 1,000 becomes tens of thousands.
Worse, the bill dismantles even the modest enforcement adopted after Israel’s High Court of Justice struck down blanket exemptions. Yeshivas that sheltered draft evaders regain budgets; refusers recover day care subsidies, National Insurance benefits and other support; and the remaining enforcement apparatus disappears.
The message is unmistakable: defy the law long enough, and the state will yield.
The penalties are equally hollow. Travel and driver’s license limits are inconveniences, not deterrents. The harsher sanctions — loss of subsidies and housing and insurance benefits — apply only if the entire community misses its targets, meaning any individual can refuse service so long as others keep the numbers up.
And because all penalties end at age 26, the law effectively encourages young men to stall until the clock runs out. A system that rewards delay is not reform; it is surrender.
Economically, the bill makes a bad situation worse. It conditions deferments on uninterrupted full-time yeshiva study and bars any work or training until age 26.
A young man who wants to leave yeshiva at 22 or 24 — whether to learn a trade or earn a living — cannot do so without immediately losing his deferment and becoming draft-eligible.
Yet the IDF has no plan to absorb thousands of late-entry conscripts, and the bill offers no civilian alternative. The effect is coercive: even those who would prefer to serve, train or work are pushed to remain in yeshiva solely to preserve their exemption.
The result is a system that locks men into nonservice and nonemployment, guaranteeing long-term dependence on state support. Expanding such dependency is neither equitable nor sustainable.
Israel cannot secure its future by codifying evasions and calling it shared sacrifice. Torah study is meaningful, but it does not replace soldiers. Israel needs a framework that requires Haredi service and enables economic participation. This bill does neither.
