The Latest Haredi Enlistment Targets: Insufficient and Ineffectual

Photo by Chaim Goldberg/Flash90

In a presentation before the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Prime Minister Netanyahu announced that the government will pass a conscription law resulting in 10,500 ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) recruits within two years, and that it will include substantial personal penalties for dodgers. However, this actually represents a postponement of targets that had already been promised by the Minister of Defense — and even those will not be met without several critical steps. The word “penalties” holds no value without a commitment to an immediate and comprehensive enforcement mechanism.

The number of Haredi recruits cited by the Prime Minister this week in the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee — 10,500 over two years — is not a new number. It is the number to which the Minister of Defense has already been committing for over six months, in accordance with the military's absorption capacity: 4,800 in the first recruitment year and 5,760 in the second. Moreover, targets outlined include 26-year-old, married men who would not be able or eligible to serve significant military roles.

The only novelty is that the Prime Minister has postponed the target by a year: 10,500 is the number of Haredim who were originally supposed to enlist by June 2026 (4,800 by June 2025 and 5,760 by June 2026).

In other words, the Prime Minister already knows that the targets will not be met by the end of June 2025, and is therefore pushing the target off by another year. It should be recalled that the military has declared that beginning in July 2026, it has no limitation on absorbing all 82,000 Haredi young adults who are subject to conscription.

Does the Prime Minister think that next year he will succeed in doing what he has failed to achieve during a year and a half of war? Does he believe that a solution will now be found to a 30 year policy failure that has left Haredim with the option to choose whether or not to enlist — a privilege denied to the rest of Israeli society? Was his "announcement" an attempt to reassure the reservists and their families, who are collapsing under the burden, or the 75% of Likud voters and 79% of Religious Zionism voters who demand Haredi enlistment?

The word “penalties” is not a magic word. It has already appeared in previous failed plans and means nothing without a commitment to a detailed enforcement mechanism and a broad and immediate scope of application.

To achieve real progress, several important steps must be taken:

1. Impose a general and equal conscription obligation on everyone — enlistment targets should not be low, and there should be a small number of exemption quotas across society. It is possible to exempt a limited and small group of exemplary individuals—such as individuals like elite athletes and exceptional students in a number of disciplines, including at yeshivas—each year and consider deferring service only up to age 20 at the latest.
2. Establish institutional penalties on yeshivas, to take effect immediately, along with a commitment to a detailed revocation mechanism that cannot be circumvented, effective in the first year. A yeshiva in which individuals study who do not meet the conscription obligation should lose all of its funding (not just the portion allocated for those violating the law).
3. Restore funding to yeshivas not at the moment of the law’s passage, but only when they comply with the conscription obligation. The yeshivas must bear the burden of proving that they are abiding by the law. No tricks, no delays. As with all state support — first fulfill your obligations, then receive funding.
4. Impose personal penalties that take effect immediately, such as the revocation of benefits and discounts in housing, daycare centers, job training, and preferential access to public sector jobs — along with a heavy monetary fine for failure to serve. Here too, a detailed mechanism is needed—the usual framework of "enlistment targets" is too difficult to enforce in this regard. In the absence of a general conscription obligation, it is difficult to impose personal sanctions.
5. Take enforcement action against lawbreakers and do not release them immediately after detention, as was recently done at Ben Gurion Airport with 350 conscription candidates, most of them Haredim.
6. If we end up in the problematic scenario where enlistment targets are set instead of a general conscription obligation, the targets must be defined strictly from among:
• Young men who completed their studies in a Haredi institution and still identify with the Haredi community. In recent years, approximately 70% of those counted as Haredim had left Haredi institutions years before their enlistment and no longer identified as Haredim at the time of their enlistment.
• Young men enlisting as combat soldiers or in combat-support roles, and not in all military professions that do not impact the reserve duty burden. This requires enlisting a large number of soldiers, since only some will serve in combat roles. Note that the army currently has an immediate need for 10,000 combat and combat-support soldiers.
• Young men enlisting in the military and not in national-civilian service. While national service is valuable, it is only effective as a supplement to military service. The Minister of Defense’s proposal to count security-related national-civilian service toward the enlistment target risks rendering that target meaningless.
• High and immediate targets, in line with the IDF's statement that it has no absorption limitations. The Minister of Defense’s proposal to reach 50% of each cohort only in 7 years (by 2031)—which would amount to less than 10% of all Haredi conscripts—is not acceptable.