Trading Zionism for Political Survival
In supporting the Basic Law: Torah Study, Israel’s Religious Zionist and Likud parties have traded away their most sacred principles for a very modest “bowl of lentils”: divisive legislation, the support of ultra-Orthodox coalition partners and a few more weeks in power. As part of a sordid deal between Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Haredi parties, the coalition has agreed to enshrine Torah study as a constitutionally acceptable alternative to military service.
The irony is hard to miss. A government dominated by religious parties and Orthodox Jewish legislators passed the bill’s first reading during the very week when synagogues around the world read Parshat Pinchas. The Torah describes how God commands Moses and Eleazar to take a census after the plague of all men “from twenty years old and upward… who are able to go out to the army in Israel” (Numbers 26:2). The proposed law is a shameful attempt to escape a tribal responsibility that has been part of Jewish tradition from time immemorial.
How the final statute will read is not yet clear. The original version declared: “The State of Israel, as a Jewish state, attaches supreme importance to encouraging Torah study and Torah scholars, and regards those who have devoted themselves to Torah study over an extended period as making a significant contribution to the State of Israel and to the Jewish people.”
The bill that actually passed first reading was watered down: “Torah study is a fundamental value in the heritage of the Jewish people and in the State of Israel, in order to create a just balance in relation to other fundamental values of the State.”
Sagit Afik, the Knesset’s chief legal advisor, who has generally cleared the path for this coalition’s nefarious legislative agenda, is not fooled. Afik opposes the Basic Law. Even the softened language, she warns, is designed to influence future judicial balancing between Torah study and competing constitutional values – equality, military service, and equal sharing of the burden – without ever mentioning draft exemptions explicitly.
For over a century, what distinguished the Religious Zionist and Revisionist Zionist ideology alike was the conviction that history had taught Jews that they must be able to defend themselves. Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the spiritual father of Religious Zionism, rejected the traditional exile mentality that depended on others for Jewish security. National revival, he argued, required “both the spirit and the body.”
For Rav Kook, the restoration of Jewish sovereignty necessarily included the restoration of Jewish self-defense. Military service was not merely compatible with holiness; it became one of the instruments through which holiness entered history. Accordingly, generations of Religious Zionist leaders held that defending Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel is a halachic obligation (a “obligatory war” or milchemet mitzvah), and military service is therefore a mitzvah.
Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism to whom the Likud still turns for ideological inspiration, regarded bearing arms as a fundamental requirement of Jewish dignity. His doctrine of Hadar – dignity and respect – demanded that Jews become capable soldiers and defenders. “Every Jew must know how to shoot,” he famously declared, not because he glorified war, but because centuries of Jewish history had demonstrated the danger of relying upon others for protection.
The ultra-Orthodox world, of course, always rejected the Zionist vision. It denies that Israel’s wars are obligatory wars – wars for which the Mishnah declares: “Everyone goes out, even a bridegroom from his chamber and a bride from her wedding canopy.” Rather, it treats Israel’s security challenges as “discretionary wars”, in which the Torah’s exemptions can apply: the man who had recently built a house, planted a vineyard, become betrothed, or was simply afraid could all go home.
Haredi leaders argue that studying Torah makes a vital contribution to the country’s security. Yet they are loath to “rely on miracles” and spiritual protection alone when it comes to intercepting ballistic missiles or defending Israel’s borders. Those responsibilities are happily left to other citizens, who bear the burdens and risks of military service.
Rarely have Religious Zionism and Revisionist Zionism agreed so completely on a core principle: Jewish sovereignty requires Jewish military responsibility. Yet today, both movements are knowingly abandoning this conviction.
And what do the coalition parties receive in return, in the legislative blitz planned for the coming two weeks? Chief among the initiatives the Haredi parties will presumably now support is carving up the office of Israel’s Attorney General.
Since the state’s inception, the Attorney General has enjoyed genuine independence, serving as one of the essential checks that ensure that Israel’s otherwise dominant executive branch of government obeys the law and the norms of governance. Dismantling that office means unraveling dozens of statutes at the heart of Israel’s law-enforcement heritage. Having made no meaningful effort for four years to amend the Attorney General’s authorities, the coalition now seeks a last-minute legislative coup: Simcha Rothman, chair of the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, announced that he would split up his original bill and push through a statute containing a mere 500 separate provisions!
Whether or not Israel’s Attorney General wields too much power is a legitimate constitutional debate. Yet it is surely a specious one when initiated by a government whose Prime Minister was indicted on three separate counts by a previous Attorney General – and who has relentlessly pressured the steadfast Gali Baharav-Miara, the current Attorney General, to drop the charges.
This debate is not taking place during peacetime. After nearly three years of war, the IDF reports a shortage of roughly 8,000 combat soldiers. Thousands of reservists are collapsing after hundreds of days of annual service, away from their families and businesses. Against that backdrop, granting constitutional legitimacy to the continued exemption of roughly 80,000 eligible Haredi men is impossible to defend morally, strategically, or politically.
Perhaps one can characterize military actions by countries like the US as “discretionary wars,” making military service a matter of choice under Jewish religious tradition. But that was surely not the case after the US was attacked at Pearl Harbor! It is impossible to imagine a conflict which better meets the criteria for “obligatory” – than the one Israel has fought since 2023 after being attacked from Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, and Yemen.
A government in which roughly one-third of the ministers never completed full compulsory military service has chosen political survival over one of Zionism’s defining commitments: the shared obligation to defend the Jewish state. Prime Minister Netanyahu and his sycophantic representatives in the Knesset have decided to turn their backs on their responsibility to the innumerable Israeli citizens who devote the best years of their lives to defending their country.
Elections are only months away. One can only hope that retribution will be swift: Israeli voters will soon decide whether this bargain reflects the country’s values, or merely the priorities of a morally bankrupt coalition struggling to prolong its time in office.
