Israel’s High Court hears petitions against orthodox army exemptions
Israel’s High Court of Justice began hearing petitions on Sunday morning against a government plan to exempt Orthodox men from mandatory military service.
Israel’s High Court of Justice meets in Jerusalem to hear petitions against a government plan to exempt Orthodox men from mandatory military service on June 2, 2024. Photo by Kobi Natan/TPS-IL
The Haredi, or Orthodox parties in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government have threatened to quit the coalition should the court impose conscription.
The government is being represented by private counsel after Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara expressed her support for the petitions on Thursday, arguing that the government was acting “without authority,” and ‘undermining the rule of law.”
The nine-judge panel hearing the petitions includes interim High Court Chief Justice Uzi Fogelman. The hearings are expected to last most of the day.
Military service is compulsory for all Israeli citizens. However, Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, and the country’s leading rabbis agreed to a status quo that deferred military service for Orthodox men studying in yeshivot, or religious institutions. At the time, no more than several hundred men were studying in yeshivot.
However, the Orthodox community has grown significantly since Israel’s founding. In January 2023, the Central Bureau of Statistics reported that Haredim are Israel’s fastest-growing community and projected it would constitute 16% of the population by the end of the decade. According to the Israel Democracy Institute, the number of yeshiva students exceeded 138,000 in 2021.
That demographic growth has fueled passionate debates about “sharing the burden” of military service, the status of religious study in a Jewish society, and Haredi integration.
The Press Service of Israel found that Haredi attitudes towards military service have softened since Hamas’s October 7 attacks.
