The senior rabbi of the Lithuanian haredi Orthodox, Rabbi Aharon Leib Shteinman, has announced that yeshiva students should not agree to enlist in National Service. The rabbi’s decision, quoted Monday in the haredi daily newspaper Yated Ne’eman, comes a day after Israel’s Cabinet approved a temporary law that would allow yeshiva students to perform national…
Today was supposed to be the start of what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called his “historic change” for Israel. But in reality, everything stayed the same. At midnight, the law that exempted Haredi men from national service expired. Which means that over the coming weeks, legally speaking at least, Haredi 18-year-olds are liable to be…
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak ordered the Israeli Defense Forces to draft haredi Orthodox men as it does other Jewish Israelis. The Associated Press reported that Barak has allowed a month for officials to formulate regulations on haredi conscription. The order came as the Tal Law, which allowed haredi men to defer army service, expired…
Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister and chairman of Kadima Shaul Mofaz announced on Tuesday that his Kadima party is leaving the governing coalition following disagreements over a universal draft law. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu submitted early Tuesday afternoon what he termed a new and far-reaching legislative proposal intended to resolve the quarrel between Likud and Kadima…
A meeting of a committee convened for the purpose of creating new IDF draft legislation, focusing on ultra-Orthodox recruits, broke down as an intense argument between Kadima MK Yohanan Plesner and Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon erupted on Wednesday. The two plan to submit the bill on Monday for a first reading in the plenum,…
My oldest son, now 19, studies in yeshiva full time. I ask him, almost every day: “When will you do army service?” I say: “A person with an iPhone or laptop should be in the army!” This is my common refrain, one my children have heard so many times at the table on Saturday afternoons…
After six decades of exempting ultra-Orthodox from the army, the Israeli government appears resolved to draft them. But the plan, widely popular among secular Israelis, may have unintended negative consequences for the tens of thousands of women serving in the military. The planned Haredi draft — a product of the recent deal that Israeli Prime…
It is common knowledge that all 18-year-old Israeli males serve in the Israel Defense Forces for three years, and all females for two years. Only that common knowledge is wrong. Israel’s Channel 2 News reports that in an interview with Israel Defense magazine, the IDF’s top human resources commander, Brigadier General Amir Rogovsky, said that…
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