The United Torah Judaism party’s Degel HaTorah faction announced on Wednesday that it had received a “green light” from its senior spiritual leaders, rabbis Dov Lando and Moshe Hirsch, to support a government bill enshrining Haredi exemption from military service in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
In a statement, the ultra-Orthodox faction said that according to the directive, the bill should be submitted “as soon as possible,” after which, and before a Knesset vote on it, “the proposal will be placed on the desk of the great Torah leaders… where a final decision will be made regarding how to vote on the law.”
For the past year, the Haredi leadership has pushed to pass a law largely keeping its constituency out of the Israel Defense Forces, after the High Court ruled that decades-long blanket exemptions from army duty traditionally afforded to full-time Haredi yeshiva students were illegal.
Some 80,000 ultra-Orthodox men aged between 18 and 24 are currently believed to be eligible for military service, but have not enlisted. The IDF has said it urgently needs 12,000 recruits due to the strain on standing and reserve forces caused by the war against Hamas in Gaza and other military challenges.
The IDF has increased enforcement against evasion but its arrests of Haredi draft dodgers have not led to an increase in enlistment and have been panned as largely ineffective by the IDF’s Personnel Directorate.
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Despite Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Boaz Bismuth (Likud) announcing in October that he would soon submit a revised draft of the bill to the committee, with the intention of bringing it to a final plenum vote in December, the legislation’s progress since then has been marked by repeated delays caused by ultra-Orthodox intransigence and internal opposition to the bill within the coalition.
Likud MK Boaz Bismuth chairs a meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, August 12, 2025. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Asked what developments had prompted the rabbis’ new instructions, a spokesman for Lando told The Times of Israel that it was due to what he called “practical considerations for saving the world of Torah.”
“In the end, the great rabbis have two main considerations. The primary consideration is that those who want to study can continue to study and the second is that those who enlist will have a suitable framework in the IDF. They will do what is needed to safeguard yeshiva students,” he said.
Lando and Hirsch had previously been reported to be at loggerheads on the issue, prompting Lando’s spokesman to recently issue a condemnation of those who had “gone so far as to invent and fabricate a false impression of division between…the great rabbis.”
The legislation is widely seen by critics as an attempt to codify draft exemptions for much of the Haredi community and pave the way for the ultra-Orthodox parties to return to the government after they quit in protest over a previous draft of the bill.
MK Moshe Gafni, a member of the Degel Hatorah faction of United Torah Judaism party, attends a plenum session in the Knesset, November 5, 2025. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Several days ago Bismuth appeared to confirm that his revised version would continue to exempt full-time yeshiva students from IDF service for the foreseeable future, stating that “within five years, 50 percent of those not in yeshiva” will enlist in the army.
A spokesperson for Bismuth did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Despite Degel HaTorah’s support, a spokesman for the chairman of Agudat Yisrael, UTJ’s other faction, announced that it remains opposed to the legislation.
“The chairman of Agudat Yisrael, MK Rabbi Yitzhak Goldknopf, has not yet received the draft of the Conscription Law… and therefore it has not yet been brought before the Council of Torah Sages,” the spokesman said in a statement, adding that the faction “will not support any bill that includes sanctions or any harm to the status and rights of Torah students.”
Fellow ultra-Orthodox party Shas, which is widely seen as supportive of the bill despite internal divisions, did not respond to Degel HaTorah’s announcement but has reportedly been waiting on Lando to express an opinion before following suit.
While a spokesman did not immediately reply to a request for comment, a senior party figure did tell The Times of Israel that Shas had “signaled a long time ago that it is in favor.”
Chairman Aryeh Deri attends a meeting of the Shas party Council of Torah Sages in Jerusalem, July 16, 2025. (Flash90)
Pushback against Haredi parties’ perceived support for the bill has led to violence and protests against ultra-Orthodox MKs in recent days.
‘You do not have a green light’
Degel HaTorah’s announcement sparked immediate condemnations from both opposition and coalition parties on the right and center.
“Media releases are not a work plan, neither from Degel nor from coalition officials. Only a law that changes the current reality and enlists Haredim is a law we will pass,” said Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s far-right Religious Zionism party.
“You do not have a green light,” tweeted Blue and White chairman Benny Gantz. “No matter what you tell yourselves, you do not have a green light to continue abandoning our fighters and Israel’s security. You do not have a green light to allow mass draft-dodging for political survival. Those days are over.”
“The army is short thousands of combat soldiers, and just this morning it was revealed that hundreds of career officers are seeking to leave the IDF. At the same time, [Haredi leaders’] draft-dodging law is getting the green light. Israel’s security is being abandoned by weaklings clinging to their seats and the perks of power,” accused Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman.
Finance Ministry Bezalel Smotrich holds a press conference at the Finance Ministry in Jerusalem on November 4, 2025. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Former prime minister Naftali Bennett slammed both the Haredi parties and Primer Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, accusing them of “imposing hundreds of additional reserve duty days on the reservists” by advancing the “evasion law.”
“How dare they?” tweeted Bennett, who is seeking the premiership in the upcoming elections. “Let me be clear: Already in the first government meeting under my leadership, we will cancel this despicable anti-Zionist law. Don’t lose hope. Better days are still ahead.”
“If there is one thing that definitively confirms that what was presented to the Knesset is a full-blown draft evasion law, it is the rabbis’ approval. They would not have approved it unless they knew it was outright draft evasion,” Opposition Leader Yair Lapid told lawmakers in the Knesset plenum, calling the bill “simply an erosion of the foundations of Zionism.”
In a statement, the Movement for Quality Government watchdog organization said that it would meet Degel HaTorah “at the High Court” in order to ensure equality of the burden of military service.
“Any attempt to circumvent the court ruling and approve, through legislation, the mass exemption of tens of thousands of Haredi youth…is a serious violation of the rule of law and equality,” the group said in a statement, promising that it would “continue the legal battle [and] not allow the government to breach the court’s rulings and harm national security.”
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