Could the Israeli Supreme Court’s decree that ultra-Orthodox be Conscripted bring Down Netanyahu?
Juan Cole 03/30/2024
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Israeli newspaper Arab 48 reports on the conscription crisis that may cause the Netanyahu government to fall and tear Israeli society apart.
The Israeli Supreme Court issued the ruling on Thursday evening, which freezes — as of April — the funds for ultra-Orthodox Jewish schools, the students of which decline military conscription. The decision came after Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had asked the courts for a delay of thirty days so that his government could come to an agreement on the law regarding the conscription of the Haredim or ultra-Orthodox.
Since Israel’s founding, members of this religious community have been excused from serving in the military and are instead subsidized through age 26 to study the Hebrew Bible in Yeshiva or religious schools.
Arab 48 quotes Netanyahu as saying that “We are able to realize the objectives of the war and solve the issue of conscription.”
He added, “Given these circumstances, I ask the honorable court not to decide on the issue of conscription and related matters for a period of 30 days, so that we can complete the agreements.”
The court issued a provisional decision forbidding the transfer of government monies to ultra-Orthodox schools and seminaries where the students have not been given a deferment or been excused entirely from military service.
The provisional decree is effective as of April 1. The government has the opportunity to submit an appeal before the end of April. A nine-judge panel will hear appeals against the ruling during May.
Some 180,000 seminary students currently receive government subsidies, and about 60,000 of them would see their funds cut off under this court decree, according to AP.
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The exemption from military service for the ultra-Orthodox has become enormously unpopular during the Israeli campaign against Gaza, where some 500 troops have been killed and thousands wounded. The resentment has grown in part because of the high birthrate among the ultra-Orthodox, such that they now make up some 13 percent of Israel’s population, up from 2 percent when Israel was founded. To have such a large group paid to pray while other Israelis are fighting and dying is increasingly untenable.
The need to subsidize the ultra-Orthodox, many of whom do not receive a practical education and therefore end up unemployed or under-employed, has driven the Israeli government to support their relocation to the Palestinian West Bank, where the government usurps Palestinian land for inexpensive housing for these Jewish fundamentalists. Some 55.8% of ultra-Orthodox men are unemployed.
Netanyahu is hiding behind his war on Gaza to ask for further delays in settling the conscription issue. Some analysts believe that he is prolonging the war precisely in order to avoid having to face such political crises.
The Supreme Court abrogated a law passed in 2015 that codified the excusing of the ultra-Orthodox from military service, on the grounds that it violates the principle of equality and burden-sharing among citizens of the Israeli state.
Some 66,000 ultra-Orthodox men have been exempted from military service this year, and only 500 of them chose to serve anyway, according to Shalom Lipner at the Atlantic Council.
This crisis has come to a head at a crucial time. The Netanyahu government needs the support of ultra-Orthodox parties to stay in power.
The chief rabbi of the Jews with North African and Spanish origins, the Sephardim, Yitzhak Yosef, said a couple of weeks ago that the ultra-Orthodox would all simply leave the country if forced to serve in the army. Many members of this group do not recognize the legitimacy of the Israeli state, insisting that Jews can only be ingathered to a Jewish state in the holy land when the Messiah comes.
Yosef also alleged that it was the prayers of the ultra-Orthodox in the seminaries that were actually responsible for Israeli military victories.
Aryeh Deri, of Moroccan heritage and the leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, lambasted the ruling as “unprecedented bullying of Bible students in a Jewish state.”
Shas has 11 seats in the 120-member Israeli parliament or Knesset, and United Torah Judaism, another ultra-Orthodox party, has 7 seats. Netanyahu only has 64 seats in parliament, and were either or both of the ultra-Orthodox parties to withdraw in protest, his government would fall, leading to new elections.