Eli Bitan
+972 Magazine / June 23, 2026
As the government seeks to enforce military service for all, ultra-Orthodox refusal is revealing cracks in the country’s militaristic consensus.
On June 3, Rabbi Moshe Hillel Hirsch stood before an audience of yeshiva students at a conference in Jerusalem. The 89-year-old American-born rabbi, a figurehead of the Haredi community in Israel, was about to depart for the United States on a delegation with dozens of senior Israeli rabbis. There, they hoped to raise funds from wealthy Americans for the ultra-Orthodox yeshivas in Israel, whose budgets the Israeli Supreme Court has decided to cut because their students refuse to serve in the Israeli military.
“We are truly at war, and we must fight for this war,” Hirsch proclaimed to the crowd in Jerusalem. “We are not talking about the war with Iran, but about the war waged by those within us who are fighting against us, and we have no way out of this situation.”
These were harsh words from a leader of the ultra-Orthodox sector. But they are no exaggeration: The battle over Haredi refusal to serve in the army is the most explosive civil issue in Israel today — one that threatens to shatter the right-wing bloc that has dominated Israeli politics almost continuously since the late 1970s.
On the one side there is the Haredi demand, growing ever more forceful, for an unconditional exemption from conscription for all young Haredi men and women. On the other side is the strong desire among much of the rest of Jewish-Israeli society to break the ultra-Orthodox resistance to the draft — particularly amid a severe reserve duty crisis following years of war — and to see Haredi men “share the burden.”
The Israeli liberal camp, meanwhile, also harbours resentment toward the ultra-Orthodox sector for its role in elevating the Israeli right to power and supporting the various policies it promotes, from the settlement enterprise in the West Bank to its efforts to dismantle the judiciary.
The ultra-Orthodox community in Israel numbers 1.4 million, about 14 percent of the population and growing due to high birth rates. With separate educational systems and media outlets, and the vast majority living in ultra-Orthodox neighbourhoods and cities, Haredim are largely isolated from the rest of Israeli society.
At the heart of the sector is a community of men who devote their lives to studying Torah in yeshivas. The community faces increasingly severe poverty, and a large part relies on direct and indirect government aid — secured through the political leverage of the ultra-Orthodox parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism, both of which are key partners in Israel’s right-wing bloc.
And yet, despite their limited room for manoeuvre, the two parties recently announced their withdrawal from Netanyahu’s coalition and threatened to break up the right-wing bloc. At the same time, anger at the political and legal systems is boiling over inside Haredi society, as extremist factions warn that any arrest of a Haredi deserter will be answered with protests blocking Israel’s main traffic arteries.
Indeed, these threats have now materialized: In recent weeks, confrontations between the police and the Haredi community have reached a new peak. The trigger was Police Commissioner Danny Levy’s announcement that police would resume detaining Haredi draft dodgers and handing them over to the military police, after a long period in which the official policy had been to refrain from doing so.
On May 27, the announcement prompted a sharply worded letter from Moshe Gafni, chair of Degel HaTorah (one of the two factions that make up United Torah Judaism), instructing members of his party to suspend all cooperation with the police.
A week later, a protest at the home of Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg stunned the Israeli public. Dozens of ultra-Orthodox demonstrators attempted to storm the justice’s home in the West Bank settlement of Alon Shvut at night. They vandalized the entrance to the building, broke windows, and damaged Sohlberg’s parked car. Police later arrested more than 60 demonstrators.
As deputy president of the Supreme Court and, under Israel’s seniority system, its expected next president, Sohlberg is considered a consensus figure in Israel: a respected jurist on the one hand, a settler and right-winger on the other. But his order to increase arrests of draft evaders made him a target for Haredi activists.
It should be noted that while the protesters themselves belonged to a fringe group within the Haredi community, amid the sharp conflict between the legal system and the community the act was greeted on the street with cheers — and only feeble condemnation.
“Under normal circumstances, after such a serious incident, you would have seen a delegation of rabbis and senior Haredi figures at Sohlberg’s home,” one Shas leader told me. “But now — crickets.”
Sohlberg’s wife, Meira, who was trapped with him in their home during the attack, later asked the media, “How can Jews hurt one another?” and went so far as to compare the protest to Kristallnacht. All the while, just a few kilometers away, young Jews set out day after day to carry out pogroms against defenseless Palestinian communities, with military and police backing.
A crisis decades in the making
The crisis over ultra-Orthodox draft refusal has plagued Israel since the state’s founding. During the 1948 war, yeshiva leaders secured orders exempting their students from conscription. Throughout the 1950s, Haredim staged demonstrations against the conscription of women into the army, while the exemption for ultra-Orthodox men studying in yeshivas steadily expanded: from 400 in 1948 to 800 in 1967.
Until the 1980s, the share of Haredim serving in the army was still roughly comparable to their share of the male population. But in 1977, when the right came to power under Prime Minister Menachem Begin, the ultra-Orthodox parties returned to the governing coalition after decades in opposition, and Haredi rabbis called for a full, unrestricted exemption for anyone who counted Torah study as their profession as part of coalition discussions.
Over time, the limits on both the number of eligible yeshivas and the number of students entitled to exemptions were lifted. As a result, the number of ultra-Orthodox men avoiding military service grew year after year, expanding far beyond the original framework of full-time Torah students. At the same time, the actual number of draft-age Haredi men and women who avoided enlistment through other channels far exceeded the official exemption figures.
Since 1970, petitions against Haredi draft exemptions had been filed to the Israeli Supreme Court, but the court repeatedly upheld the status quo. The turning point came in the late 1990s, when the court ruled that exemptions could no longer be regulated by government arrangement alone, and that the Knesset would have to anchor them in legislation.
The result was the 2002 “Tal Law,” which allowed full-time yeshiva students to defer conscription and later choose between a shortened military service track or civilian national service. Ten years later, the Supreme Court struck down the law as unconstitutional.
Since then, the issue of Haredi conscription has been a singularly divisive issue in Israel’s political and legal system. Separatist ultra-Orthodox leaders and politicians promise their voters exemption from military service; right-wing governments struggle to translate that promise into law; the courts strike down attempts to legislate the exemption regime; and liberal leaders pledge to do everything possible to draft the ultra-Orthodox into the army.
In 2017, the Supreme Court struck down an amendment to the conscription law that the Haredi parties had passed two years earlier to shield young Haredi men from the draft, ruling that it violated the principle of equality. The High Court gave the Knesset one year before the law would expire, allowing lawmakers time to pass a revised version. But year after year, implementation of the ruling was postponed to give successive governments more time to legislate an alternative.
Numerous bills have been placed before the Knesset since, but none passed. Then, in July 2023, at the height of the Israeli protest movement against the judicial overhaul and just a few months before October 7, the law finally expired, with no option to extend it again.
As fate would have it, the timing could hardly have been worse for the Haredi parties: in the midst of Israel’s constitutional crisis, and on the eve of a prolonged war.
Policing the Haredi street
In February 2024, the Supreme Court issued an interim order requiring the Israeli government to explain why Haredim should not be drafted in the absence of a law exempting them. A month later, it issued another interim order instructing the state to stop funding Haredi yeshivas attended by draft-eligible students.
With the expiration of the law, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara was granted the freedom to take independent action against the ultra-Orthodox community. This began in August 2024 with the revocation of benefits such as discounts on daycare for children whose fathers refuse to report for military service.
For some Haredi families, the loss of those subsidies made an already fragile childcare system even more precarious. Many Haredi families turned to what have come to be known as “child warehouses” — unregulated daycare centers where dozens of children are kept in poor sanitary conditions and without sufficient staff. A few months after the benefit was revoked, two infants died in such an unlicensed daycare center in Jerusalem, and about 50 infants were evacuated to the hospital. While this specific daycare center had been operating for years, many in the ultra-Orthodox community placed the blame on the attorney general.
Other measures the government has taken included the suspension of funding for yeshivas attended by draft dodgers, and most dramatically, launching a wave of arrests in ultra-Orthodox communities (although the numbers remain uncertain). Young men who previously had a legal exemption from conscription suddenly faced the threat of a lengthy prison sentence.
On the surface, this is the fate of every Israeli deserter and certainly of every conscientious objector. Yet for Haredim, it is not merely an individual act of defiance — it is part of an intra-communal conflict. A young ultra-Orthodox man raised to reject military service risks becoming an outcast in his community and even his family if he dares to enlist. Now, he finds himself torn between the dictates of his conscience and his religion, the expectations of his community and family, and the letter of the law enforced by the state.
This state of affairs, in which every police officer comes to be seen as an enemy, threatens the very foundations of Haredi society in Israel. Even in cases of domestic violence or sexual abuse, community members prefer not to call the police. The fear that any encounter with law enforcement could lead to the arrest of a deserter — and to the widespread clashes that often follow — risks spreading anarchy through ultra-Orthodox neighbourhoods, where cooperation with state authorities is already fraught even in ordinary times.
This is why Haredi activists who have been engaged for years in various struggles within their own society speak with great apprehension about the recent measures to enforce conscription. A breakdown in the already fragile relationship with the police could further isolate Haredi neighbourhoods and cities from the rest of Israeli society, and strengthen the ultra-Orthodox establishment — the leaders who control and oppress individual Haredim, and who seek to remain the community’s sole intermediaries with the state.
It could also encourage the rise of internal organizations that impose order inside Haredi society through coercive means, not entirely unlike the organized crime networks that have taken root in Palestinian society inside Israel. Such a development would be a disaster for Haredi society, especially Haredi children, and for Israeli society writ large.
Israel’s largest refusal movement
For mainstream Jewish Israelis, the ultra-Orthodox are viewed as a group that must be “educated and reformed” in order to counter the “demographic threat” they pose — one second in intensity only to the fear of a growing Palestinian population. Few ask what the social or personal consequences of forced conscription would be. Fewer still seem to care.
Even within Israel’s most left-wing circles, ultra-Orthodox resistance to military conscription provokes discomfort. The main reason is that, for Haredim, refusing the draft does not reflect opposition to war. On the contrary: Even if much of the rabbinical leadership holds relatively moderate or pragmatic political positions, young ultra-Orthodox Jews are increasingly identified with Israel’s far right, despite refusing to fight themselves.
Figures like National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir are treated as heroes on the ultra-Orthodox street. Haredim also play an active role in the settlement enterprise in the West Bank and East Jerusalem: They constitute nearly half of Israeli Jews living beyond the Green Line, and the two largest settlements are ultra-Orthodox cities.
Conscientious objection in Israel remains largely a matter of individual defiance. Yet the ultra-Orthodox today constitute the most significant Jewish refusal movement in the country — one that threatens the consensus around war, the unity of the society that sustains it, and the morale of Israeli combat soldiers. Still, it receives almost no support.
One exception is Mesarvot, one of the main organizations assisting conscientious objectors in Israel, which is affiliated with the left-wing party Hadash and also supports Haredi deserters and prisoners. Just this week, the group helped publish a letter signed so far by 120 young Israelis facing conscription, declaring their refusal to enlist and take part in the army’s crimes.
Still, while it is hard to criticize Israel’s consistent left which is itself facing persecution by various state authorities, the silence of many of its leaders and organizations while Haredim are targeted for refusing to serve is both morally and politically mistaken.
Black Alert
In the upcoming election campaign, the question of mandatory service — and of ultra-Orthodox conscription in particular — will be one of the most contentious issues, one that may outweigh the security failure of October 7, the results of the Gaza war, and Israel’s exclusion from the recent U.S.-Iran agreement.
The Israeli opposition, which aims to replace the right-wing government, is promoting the concept of Brit Hameshartim — a “covenant of those who serve.” The alliance brings together parties from the right, center, and Zionist left around a shared message of military and national service, one that excludes both the ultra-Orthodox and Palestinian citizens of Israel, who together make up more than 30 percent of the population.
As a result, Netanyahu’s Likud and the Israeli far right appear increasingly vulnerable because of their alliance with the ultra-Orthodox parties. Some Haredim, meanwhile, may abstain from voting for those parties, which they see as having failed to protect young men from punishment for draft evasion.
But the ultra-Orthodox are not waiting for the election, which they no longer see as a way out of the crisis. It is unclear whether Netanyahu’s coalition will survive, as even a staunchly right-wing government like the current one has failed to pass a law regulating the status of yeshiva students and their exemption from conscription.
What remains is the street. In the first months after the law expired, as it became clear that tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews could soon face arrest, a telephone system called “Black Alert” was established. Modelled on Israel’s missile-warning system, it notifies subscribers whenever a draft dodger is detained by military police.
Today, two of the largest notification lines together have more than 130,000 registered subscribers. When an alert goes out, hundreds or thousands of protesters can rush to the scene within minutes, surround the police vehicle, and pull the detainee out. The practice has become so effective that many police officers are afraid to detain ultra-Orthodox draft dodgers.
Behind the “Black Alert” hotline is the extremist Jerusalem Faction. The group broke away from the mainstream Haredi movement more than a decade ago, arguing that the struggle against efforts to draft Haredim had to be far more active and confrontational. Over the years, its members were pushed to the margins of Haredi power and influence, and many stopped voting for ultra-Orthodox parties altogether.
With tens of thousands of members ready to take to the streets, the Jerusalem Faction has become the main force behind the Haredi protests that are currently bringing Israel to a standstill. On June 17, following the arrests of several Haredi draft evaders, one of the groups that make up the faction blocked a major highway at 8 a.m. with no advance warning. Apart from a small group of journalists, including this writer, no one had been informed of the protest in advance.
The police response was explosive. Officers charged at the protesters with batons and tore the pants off several of them, leaving them in their underwear. Images of bloodied protesters standing half-naked in the road soon led the evening news broadcasts.
But while the Jerusalem Faction is currently driving the protests, if more draft dodgers are arrested and the confrontation between the police and the Haredi public continues to escalate, it is entirely possible that the wider ultra-Orthodox sector will join the wave of street protests.
Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach, the late leader of the Jerusalem Faction who laid the foundations for its uncompromising struggle against military conscription initiatives, set the tone. Whenever a yeshiva student was arrested, the rabbi instructed, “the whole exile must become a bonfire” — a call for mass disruption across the Haredi world.
That is why, while Israeli commentators often debate what it will take to force the ultra-Orthodox into the military, the more urgent question may be what their stubborn refusal is doing to the idea of the “people’s army” itself — and whether it could become the starkest challenge to Israel’s militaristic consensus from within Jewish-Israeli society.
Eli Bitan is a journalist in the ultra-Orthodox press in Israel, and a blogger on Local Call
