Court orders decisive enforcement, ending decades of exemptions enabling draft evasion amid Israel’s security challenges.
Israel’s Supreme Court issued a dramatic and unanimous ruling on Wednesday, ordering the government to immediately craft an “effective enforcement policy” targeting widespread haredi draft evasion, including significant criminal penalties and sweeping economic-civil sanctions.
The ruling blasts the government’s long-standing failures, asserting that state authorities have behaved in a manner “not far from total renunciation” of enforcing the law. For years, tens of thousands of eligible haredi men have avoided compulsory military service while still benefiting from public funding — a situation the justices declared unacceptable and unlawful.
The court’s new order requires the government to establish:
1️⃣ Criminal enforcement actions
Including robust indictments and prosecutions against draft evaders who knowingly refuse induction orders.
2️⃣ Economic and civilian sanctions
Such as removing benefits, eliminating subsidies, and restricting state support for individuals whose yeshiva attendance is effectively used as a shield for evasion.
The ruling explicitly warns against government attempts to bypass enforcement through “creative funding channels,” stating such maneuvering “cannot be considered effective”, and therefore cannot meet the legal test. Benefits directly or indirectly linked to draft avoidance — including financial support for yeshiva students whose presence is a de facto evasion tool — must cease immediately.
The justices emphasized that the state must act “with due diligence” and move quickly to implement “significant criminal proceedings” against draft evaders, reshaping decades of political stagnation on one of the most explosive issues in Israeli society.
This ruling marks the strongest judicial intervention yet in Israel’s fierce national dispute over the universal draft, and signals that the court will no longer tolerate asymmetry in civic burden while the IDF faces unprecedented threats across multiple fronts.
