With backs to the wall on IDF draft, Haredi MKs slam Edelstein, A-G

Edelstein has yet to present the text of a new law proposal based on agreements reached with haredi representatives on June 12, the eve of Israel’s attack against Iran.

Members of Knesset from the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) parties criticized Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman MK Yuli Edelstein (Likud) and Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara on Wednesday and Thursday over their conduct regarding haredi service in the IDF.

Edelstein has yet to present the text of a new law proposal based on agreements reached with haredi representatives on June 12, the eve of Israel’s attack against Iran. A spokesperson for Edelstein said on Thursday that the bill would indeed be based on the agreements, but that there were still many details to work out.

However, in a Thursday article in Shas’s newspaper Haderech, party spokesperson Asher Medina argued that Edelstein had reneged on some of the agreements.

“The act of deceit and fraud surrounding the draft law knows no rest,” Medina wrote. “The ink on Edelstein’s festive [June 12] announcement about the agreements barely dried, and already it turned out [that] the promises remained only on paper. The public and media pressure wasn’t long in coming, and Edelstein, as is his way, began to feel pressured and panicked and started dragging his feet.

“Suddenly, he asked to backtrack, reopened issues that had already been settled, and shifted the blame onto the committee’s legal adviser. At the same time, he launched a symphony of briefings to journalists,” Medina wrote.

“The very agreement that Edelstein proudly boasted about... has suddenly, according to him, become a tactical concession forced upon him by the attack in Iran. The level of trust the haredi delegation has in Edelstein is close to nothing. Even lower is the level of trust the Council of Torah Sages has in the chance that this committee will produce a law that satisfies them.

“If, at this stage, there are demands to reopen issues that were already agreed upon, what will stop them from deceiving Torah scholars again and again?” Medina added.

He argued that the haredi parties had “no choice” but to use the only parliamentary tool at their disposal to apply pressure. For weeks, haredi MKs have boycotted voting on bills proposed by private MKs, which usually come up on Wednesdays.

However, for the first time this week, the MKs boycotted the plenum on Monday as well, forcing the coalition to remove from the agenda government-proposed bills and bills that were in advanced stages of legislation.

THE AGREEMENTS stipulated that an increasing number of haredi draftees would enlist annually, with the ultimate goal of 50% of each graduating class drafting within five years.

The bill included a series of sanctions that would apply to draft dodgers gradually, with some relatively light sanctions applying immediately, and heavier sanctions added at six-month increments. Financial sanctions would also be applied to yeshivot that do not reach draft quotas. In the meantime, current sanctions against draft dodgers, which include blocked funds to yeshivot and the cessation of state-subsidized daycare, would be lifted.

Medina’s mention of the committee’s legal adviser, Miri Frenkel-Shor, was notable, since the agreements drew legal and public criticism soon after they were published.

The head of the Finance Ministry’s Budget Department, Yoav Gardos, wrote in a letter to Frenkel-Shor on July 2 that the agreement would actually serve as an incentive not to enlist and not to work and, in effect, perpetuate the issues that it set out to solve.

Gardos pointed out that the idea of quotas may already be a nonstarter since they did not place a specific requirement for individual haredim to enlist. In addition, he explained that the immediate sanctions would not significantly affect many young haredi yeshiva students. In the meantime, the law’s passage will free up funds to yeshivot and to parents that are currently frozen because of students’ draft evasion.

THE PREVIOUS exemption for haredi men officially ended with a High Court ruling in June 2024, and since no new bill has passed, the current legal status requires the enlistment of all of the approximately 80,000 eligible haredi men.

Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara has held monthly meetings since then to ensure that the High Court ruling is being implemented.

The most recent meeting took place on Sunday. According to a summary of the meeting put out by the A-G’s spokesperson, IDF representatives said they had taken a number of measures to increase enforcement against draft dodgers.

These included a change of protocol to shorten the grace period for draftees before they are considered draft-dodgers; increased enforcement at border crossings, roadblocks, and regular arrests; pre-initiated enforcement based on intelligence; a special plan during the month of September to ease punishment on draft-dodgers who report for service on their own accord; and adding jail cells for draft-dodgers who continue to refuse service.

IDF to send out 54,000 draft orders

In addition, on top of the approximately 24,000 draft orders sent out over the past year, the IDF will send out the remaining 54,000 by the end of July, which will apply gradually until June 2026, pertinent to the IDF’s capacity to process new recruits.

Degel Hatorah chairman MK Moshe Gafni said on Thursday, “Baharav-Miara has declared herself the leading fighter against the world of Torah, its students, and those who uphold the Jewish people. We will not allow even a single yeshiva student to be prevented from learning Torah or to interrupt his studies.

“The Jewish people are well-acquainted with the trials of history, both near and distant, in which attempts were made to stop Torah study, and we know how those attempts ended.”

In his article on Thursday, Medina wrote the following about Baharav-Miara:

“At the Attorney-General’s Office, they gleefully rubbed their hands and raced, eyes wide open, toward chaos. There, they pressured the IDF to issue tens of thousands more draft notices to haredim, toughen sanctions, shorten enforcement timelines, and even consider extreme measures like arrests and checkpoints at the entrances to haredi cities.”

Medina continued, “In their view, the draft law is the last card left to shatter the Netanyahu government through a rupture with the haredi public. And they won’t relent. They will do everything to sabotage a legal arrangement, to prevent a resolution, lest even a single yeshiva student escape the ‘draft-dodger’ label they’ve assigned him.”

The boycotts drew criticism from within the coalition. MK Dan Illouz (Likud) on Wednesday and MK Moshe Saada (Likud) on Thursday expressed their opposition to the haredi maneuver, which they claimed was unacceptable during wartime.