I didn’t want to hijack the ongoing never-ending Israel-Palestine threads.
So, I am, of course non-Jewish, non-Israeli, and only have the most superficial understanding of the matter. And I know we have some Jewish/Israeli Dopers here who could write an entire book on the topic. But ISTM that every Haredim argument for not serving in the IDF is rather…well, inane. The more I read of it, the more it just sounds to me like a “things shouldn’t change because we don’t want them to change” circular argument.
The argument that their Torah study protects the Jews and Israel = that’s a…questionable assertion.
The argument of “we are a large voting bloc and we’ll punish any party who tries to conscript us into the IDF” = okay, but that’s not an actual appeal to logic and reason, that’s an appeal of vote-threat, a power-bully move.
The argument of “we don’t want to because we don’t want to” - okay, well, I’m sure most of the other non-Haredim folks who serve in the IDF as draftees aren’t thrilled about army life either. Nobody joins the military for fun.
So, if we take all the usual talking points away, is there really any true, legit, logical reason why the Haredim should be exempt?
The realpolitik reason is that Far right religious parties are an important ( roughly 30 or so seats) part of the current controlling coalition in the Knesset, which makes Netanyahu PM.
There are 120 seats, 60 needed to control, and Bibis own party has 32. .
At this point, I have extreme sympathy for anyone not wanting to join the IDF, given Israel’s military actions. It has similar vibes to draft dodging over the Vietnam War to me. People should be able to object to going into immoral wars.
Forcing people in means they will do a worse job. That’s one of the main reasons to get rid of a draft in general.
Whenever anyone anywhere says about anything “It’s against my religion”, truth, legitimacy, and logic have left the building never to return.
It really is no more complex than that. One either accepts the idea that religion is a legitimate thing worthy of civil and governmental deference, or one rejects that idea.
There are civil societies and governments on Earth that (almost) entirely reject religious deference. And others that are all-but defined by their religious identity with nigh universal private and official adherence to religious strictures.
Israel is a complicated stew, but religious deference is pretty well baked into the society, as well as current politics.
Although usually conscientious objecters do so because they believe war is imoral and so view their participation would violate their ethics. While the Haradim tend to be extremely hawkish as far as the war against Palestinians goes. They have no moral qualms about it they just feel they are special and so should be exempt, the ultimate chickenhawks.
Maybe @Alessan knows the story, but here’s my understanding:
Israel was founded for a mix of secular and religious reasons. The religious reason being “this is the land God gave to the Jews”. But the Jews need to keep their side of the bargain, which is to follow the law God gave them.
When the Haredi were first granted that exemption, my understanding is that it was only a couple of hundred men, many of whom opposed the creation of a secular state of Israel before the Messiah returned. (Or maybe those Haredi stayed in the diaspora, and the ones in Israel were okay with the state?)
Anyway, it was originally sort of a minor thing. These 200 men are praying and helping us, collectively, to keep God’s law. And they would name much difference anyway. I think they even get subsidized by the state for their service of praying.
Of course, the Haredi tend to have huge families, and have become a large and important minority over the years. Both their political power and the resentment against them by everyone else have grown substantially since then. And now, they represent a significant person of the potential military. So now it’s in the news, and their status might even change.
The Haredim in Israel literally view themselves as an elevated religious caste, above such worldly drudgery like “fighting for their country” or “working for a living”. They believe - or claim to believe - that their prayers and study do more to help physically protect the Jewish People than anything lowly plebes like me can ever hope to do. God works for them, so why shouldn’t we? They’re hardly pacifists, so long as it isn’t them doing the fighting, and their beliefs regarding human rights, women’s rights, gay rights and democracy in general are less than medieval. I fucking hate their guts.
So the answer to the OP is NO. They have no valid or logical reasons why they should not have to serve.
I can think of one argument why they shouldn’t serve in the military: instead of spending their childhoods learning math, science, English, or reading modern Hebrew literature, they spend the entirety of their educational period on religious studies that don’t prepare them in any way to survive or thrive in the modern world.
Lior Schlein, an Israeli comedian, put it this way: before we talk about drafting them into the army at 18, let’s talk about drafting them into the modern world at 5 or 6 (school age).
In some ways, he isn’t wrong. I don’t think that Haredim with near zero interaction with the real world would do particularly well tossed into the service, nor would their attitudes be beneficial to the IDF. But I don’t think it outweighs the unfairness of the Haredi population freeloading off of everyone else. Maybe knowing that 18 they’re going to be tossed into the real world whether they like it or not for at least a few years, they’d do more to prepare their children for a modern existence.
I can’t figure out how to turn it on intentionally, but I know these videos can be auto-dubbed to English by YouTube since I’ve accidentally turned it on in the past.
Haredim aren’t particularly hawkish; pretty much all they care about at a political level is their draft exemption and Yeshiva subsidies. Americans who have only been paying attention intermittently are often confused about this, but the Haredi parties will happily coalition with either the right or the left when that is what will secure their interests. For example, they were part of Rabin’s coalition.
You might be confusing Haredim with Religious Zionists, the settler or settler supporting types who vote for the likes of Smotrich. They aren’t Haredi, and despite being highly religious, they don’t have a problem with military service.
“Haredi” doesn’t just mean “very religious”. It’s a particular religious, ideological, cultural group. There are other “very religious” groups that are completely different.
If their prayers and studies do more to protect Israel than anything else, then how come Hamas was able to attack Israel on Oct 7? Or any of the other attacks from whomever? Seems like the charade isn’t working.
The Haredim’s single, solitary concern is maintaining their community’s isolation from the outside world and the control of their rabbis over that community. That, of course, is the true reason for their opposition to military service: they do not want their children to mingle with the secular people (who they view as little better if not worse than non-Jews) so as not to become contaminated with the intellectual contagion that is secularism.
So long as the Haredim view alliance with Netanyahu as beneficial to achieving this goal, they will support him, and whatever he wants to do, including this war. But that is an incremental goal, with the true goal always being to maintain their holy separation.
If they’re that serious about isolating themselves from secular concerns, how about them not being able to vote, either? That would seem like a fair trade for being let out of the societal obligations everyone else is subject to.
