Why compulsory military service is not accepted by the ultra-Orthodox in Israel

Israeli ultra-Orthodox protesters in Jerusalem on Sunday against the Supreme Court’s decision to make military service compulsory, although they were previously exempt from it. franceinfo met David, who explains the anger behind this decision.

This is a massive blow for the approximately 1.3 million Israeli ultra-Orthodox people. Since the creation of the Jewish state in 1948, they have been exempt from military service. But a decision earlier this week by the Supreme Court, the highest authority in the country, now forces the government to pass a law which should force them to commit.

A relief for the majority of the population who bear the burden of war, but a real betrayal for those who think of themselves as God’s army. They demonstrated on Sunday evening, June 30, in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Mea Shearim, in Jerusalem.

David, 27, left this very closed community in 2017, but knows how it works very well: he studied for seven years in a Yeshiva, a religious school in Jerusalem. “I left completely. I left religion,” he simply declares.

But he continues to read the ultra-Orthodox press and he has kept good friends in the community. “They are very, very, very angry. The religious are forced to go to the army, like their non-religious comrades. Nobody asks him if he wants to go to the army or if he wants to go to Yeshiva. At the age of 18, you go to the army. If you don’t go to the army, you go to prison. It’s like a little kid whose teddy bear has been taken away,” he testifies.

“They have received a lot of money over the last fifteen years from Netanyahu’s government. He has given them tons and tons of money. And now they understand that it’s over. They are being illuminated with huge spotlights. Everything you do there, we see you All the budgets that you passed to the right, to the left.explains David.

“That’s it, it’s over, we see everything and now we’re fed up. We also have to stop funding these people.”

This funding has been negotiated since the end of the 1970s with all the right-wing governments in power. Most of the public money allocated to the ultra-Orthodox goes into religious education. It is this advantage which is today called into question by the Supreme Court, if young men refuse to join the army.

“All the ultra-Orthodox in Israel are based on these educational associations. A very large part of the religious work in education. They are going to be teachers. If you want to have a job, you have to please people and you have to do what people tell you to get your salary. They control people a little bit. It is the country that pays because it is state money. There is a lot of anger, a lot of anger.”deplores the one who left the community.

It is therefore an entire clientelist system that is called into question. Today there are between 700 and 1,200 ultra-Orthodox young people participating in the war effort. The state wants 3,000 more this year, out of around 8,000 men of enlistment age.