Orthodox Israelis clash at army office

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Hundreds of Haredim — Orthodox Jewish Israelis — clashed with police outside an army recruiting centre in the Tel Aviv area on Monday after the military sent notices to 1,200 men ordering them to report for enlistment.

Haredi, or Orthodox Israeli Jews, clash with police at an army recruitment centre in Ramat Gan on Aug. 5, 2024. Photo by Eitan Elhadez-Barak/TPS-IL

One Haredi army veteran told The Press Service of Israel that while he doesn’t regret his service, neither the military nor the Haredi community make life easy for the observant recruits.

Protesters tried to enter the Tel HaShomer army base in Ramat Gan, the army’s largest recruitment centre. Several people were arrested when the protest turned violent as the demonstrators started taking down police barricades.

The Israel Defense Forces began making plans to draft yeshiva students after Israel’s High Court of Justice ruled in June that exemptions for the Haredi community were illegal. The move could potentially topple the governing coalition. The Haredi parties have threatened to quit the governing coalition over the issue.

The current notices were sent only to Haredi men who were registered with the National Insurance Institute as working, and not to full-time students registered in yeshivas or institutions of religious study. The IDF estimates that around 30% of the men who received the notices will show up on Monday and Tuesday.

One Haredi man who has served in the army told The Press Service of Israel that while he has no regrets, the IDF “didn’t make it easy” and Haredi society treats soldiers from its community as “outcasts.”

Eliyahu Chait formerly served in Netzah Yehuda an exclusively Haredi battalion. “Out of 200 soldiers who served with me, I was the only one I know who went back to yeshiva right after the army. Many of my friends from Nezah Yehuda are completely not religious now,” he told TPS-IL.

Chait is the founder of Kochot, a Jerusalem-based program that helps Haredi men navigate post-military life.

“If you want more religious people to draft, you need to prove to the parents that they’ll have a way to continue a religious lifestyle after their service,” Chait insisted. He suggested, for example, a mechanism to punish commanders who violate soldiers’ religious rights.

“We should be sending more people to the army, but by accommodating haredim, not fighting them. If guys will actually come out with an amazing service, without falling apart, having stayed connected to religion and to their families, that is the most powerful way to change the paradigm,” he stressed.

The notice, known as a “tzav rishon,” requires recruits to report to an army recruiter to discuss placement and undergo routine medical examinations. The process usually takes around four hours, and then the recruits go home.

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 Haredi 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 war against Hamas, now in its tenth month, has stretched the army’s manpower needs, sharpening the national debate. The Press Service of Israel found that Haredi attitudes towards military service have softened since Hamas’s October 7 attacks.