Are dual citizens of Israel obligated to do military service? If so, what are the implications for dual citizens worldwide of the call-up of IDF reservists? Must they come back to Israel and join the fight? If so, what if they don’t? Would they be subject to extradition for breaking Israeli law, and/or subject to arrest if they entered Israel again?
I’m sure someone who knows more about Israel will be along shortly, but dual Taiwanese American male citizens are required to do military service.
A quick google search:
I found this which suggests that yes, someone with dual-citizenship with Israel is subject to Israeli military service:
A person with dual citizenship of the United States and Israel is not considered a foreign citizen in accordance with the Security Service Law and, therefore, will be subject to mandatory military service. - SOURCE
It also said (same link as above):
While staying on Israeli territory, a man with Israeli passport will be considered exclusively as the owner of Israeli citizenship. He is obliged to comply with the laws of this particular country.
Which makes me wonder if Israel can demand those people return to Israel for military service? (I do not know.) It does seem though that if they are in Israel when the call comes then they are obligated to respond.
Most countries accommodate dual citizenship by simply ignoring it. Country A may be fine with you, a citizen of Country A, also being a citizen of Country B. But the flip side is that being a citizen of Country B will secure you no advantage or preference in your dealings with Country A. So it would be unusual for a country that has a military draft to grant exemptions to citizens who also hold the citizenship of a second country.
However many countries that have a draft will grant exemptions or deferments to citizens that live abroad. There’s a practical aspect to this — you can’t enforce the draft against citizens who live abroad; all you can do is discourage them from visiting the country in case they get drafted on arrival.
I don’t think there’s any country that will extradite you because another country wants to draft you into its army.
I’m sure Israel can demand it, but has no way to make them actually comply.
I assume the threat would be that Israel would label you a criminal if you did not do as they asked and arrest you if they got the chance (i.e. you went to Israel). That may or may not matter to the person.
If you’re a dual citizen living in Israel, like me, there’s absolutely no difference between you and any other Israeli citizen.
If you’re living abroad, you have no obligation to show up for reserve duty in Israel. Nobody’s going to ask you to fly all the way to Israel to serve.
Bear in mind that in general, there’s very little legal enforcement of reserve call-ups during wartime - the system assumes that people want to serve, or at least, are embarrassed not to. The military isn’t going to waste resources rounding up people which hath no stomach to this fight.
There’d be no need for that. If you’re already threatened with being drafted and sent to war if you set foot in Israel, the threat of being prosecuted for draft evasion instead would not really be material.
When I sought a [former Socialist state of] Jugoslavia passport to which I was eligible to make travel in eastern Europe easier as my second nationality, I was told that I could not get issued it until either I had done my service or had the obligation expunged.
I have also heard cautionary tales of Australian colleagues with Greek dual citizenship convenience passports being taken off the plane at Athens because they remained liable for military service.
Whatever Israel’s particular policies around citizenship may be, I expect that all states will treat you as their citizen once in that country and essentially not care about your other citizenship. You may choose not to fly over from the US if there is a reservist call, but no guarantee it will not be on file when you take a holiday there in 10 years time and face a significant fine or charge for failing to do so.
There is no such file. I’ve missed reserve duty when living in the United States, and I suffered no penalties whatsoever.
The point of a reservist call-up is to get trained soldiers as soon as possible.
You want troops now, or even sooner! Nobody cares about those overseas, who can’t get there for days. The commanders are far too busy to worry about those few people,
On another forum we recently had a member post about his experience with dual Israel/US citizenship and military service requirements.
Apparently, he and his family went on vacation in Israel when he was 18 and as they were leaving he was pulled aside because he was 18 and the authorities wanted to hold him in Israel to do his required service time.
The upshot was that he had to surrender his Israeli citizenship in order to leave Israel.
I’m sure there are a lot of nuances involved in individual cases, but once you’re physically in a particular country you are subject to their laws and their control.
I can’t speak for that poster, but that doesn’t sound very plausible. To the best of my knowledge, the Israeli military almost always grants deferrals to citizens who can prove that their permanent place of residence is outside the country. Plenty of U.S. college students with Israeli passports visit Israel all the time, and none of them are drafted against their will.
Plus, when they draft you, they give you a draft date several months or even more in the future, and you can travel freely until that date. My son’s draft date is next month, and he travelled to Amsterdam last week with no problems at all.
On the news last night, they talked about and showed former Israelis, now American citizens, who are going back to Israel to fight for their homeland. That kind of love and loyalty moves my heart! 
I don’t have the full details, but it may be he had already received a draft notice. Or maybe it went astray.
I also gather that it wasn’t just the one vacation, his family had been switching residence between Israel and the US periodically. It might be that they had done so often enough that his status was more ambiguous than it would have otherwise been. I don’t doubt his story, people can and do get caught in government bureaucracy.
I do know that when the local Jewish Federation organizes trips for young adults to Israel they caution the young men with dual citizenship to make sure their draft/deferment status is clear (apparently not quite the same issue with young women? I know they also have a service requirement) to avoid any problems. I also gather that sorting it out with the local consulate here is pretty straightforward.
That makes a lot more sense. Thanks.
I remember similar stories in Canada during the years of the Greek junta - that children who were born in Greece but immigrated to Canada as a child were still liable for military service, and the story on one fellow who moved to Canada as an infant, barely spoke any Greek, yet was caught on a trip back there to visit grandparents and forced to do his service.
(I remember talking to some East German backpackers in UK just after the Berlin Wall fell, who found it hard to believe that most western countries did not have mandatory military service.)
West Germany still had mandatory military service in the late 1970s if not later. Not long after I returned from my EAP year I remember a German friend mentioning in a letter that his time was coming and he’d have to go “play soldier”. I think it was probably like being a reservist in the United States.
I know the UK ended theirs sometime around the late 1950s.
When I visited Israel in 1976 (I was 39), they pulled me out of the pass control line at the airport into a separate room. I am pretty sure they were looking to see if I was actually a citizen and subject to draft. I wasn’t.
When my wife spent a year in France as a student, one of her fellow students had actually been born in France although he hadn’t lived there very long. He had to be careful to leave before he had spent a year there for at the end of a year the French would decide had become a resident and was subject to the draft (this was in 1960).
A friend went to Israel for a few weeks. He had been born there, and I believe his family moved back to the States when he was about 5 years old. As he was going through passport control, he was pulled aside because his name popped up; he had never cleared his draft deferment. They didn’t make him join the IDF, but he did have to spend a few miserable hours in the airport. The odd thing is that he had been back and forth numerous times, but there was never a problem until this trip - and he was already in his 40s.