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IDF ordered to immediately draft thousands of ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students

Israeli Attorney General orders IDF to immediately implement Supreme Court ruling on ultra-Orthodox draft, calling for thousands of yeshiva students to be called up for military service.

By World Israel News Staff

The Israeli military must begin the immediate drafting of thousands of yeshiva students, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara instructed the IDF following a landmark ruling by Israel’s high court.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled against the Israeli government’s decision to continue to issue annual draft deferments to full-time yeshiva students and to fund students relying on the deferments despite the court’s striking down of the draft law years earlier.

“The state does not have the authority to instruct a broad exemption from service and in the absence of a law, funding cannot be made from state coffers for yeshiva students who were not legally exempt from service,” the court ruled, noting that no new draft law had been passed since the prior one was struck down seven years ago.

Later on Tuesday, Baharav-Miara wrote to the IDF and various government ministries instructing them to begin implementing the court’s ruling, and demanding the immediate drafting of 3,000 yeshiva students and the freezing of funding for yeshiva students who are now liable for the draft.

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Deputy Attorney General Gil Limon wrote that the army “is obligated to act immediately to implement the ruling to draft yeshiva students who are obligated to perform military service, in accordance with the needs of the army and its capabilities, and in accordance with its commitment to draft 3,000 recruits.”

In 2017, the court tossed out a 2015 Knesset law which largely restored the deferments system as it existed prior to a 2014 law, which encouraged yeshiva students to enlist in the military and set quotas for ultra-Orthodox recruitment.

While the court had granted delays in the implementation of the ruling due to the political quagmire of 2019-2020, the coronavirus pandemic, and the outbreak of the Gaza war, it refused to further extend the struck-down 2015 draft law beyond June.

An estimated 63,000 full-time yeshiva students are potentially eligible for the draft, the IDF has said, though the military is unable to induct more than 3,000 at this time.

Ultra-Orthodox leaders and media outlets quickly condemned Tuesday’s ruling, calling it a ‘declaration of war’ on the community.

The ruling constitutes a “shattering of the status quo and declaration of war on the Torah world,” wrote Hamodia, mouthpiece of the Hasidic faction within the Knesset’s United Torah Judaism party.