The Blogs: Why Israel Can No Longer Subsidize Mass Draft Evasion

Two years after October 7, Israeli combat soldiers are still crowdfunding ceramic plates and drones while the state transfers billions of shekels every year to institutions whose students are legally exempt from the defense burden most citizens carry. This is not a sustainable arrangement for a country at war—nor is it compatible with basic principles of equality, shared responsibility, and women’s rights.

The numbers are no longer in dispute:

The state allocates approximately NIS 5.3 billion annually in direct yeshiva and kollel funding, with additional billions in child allowances, municipal tax discounts, and national-insurance exemptions that overwhelmingly benefit the ultra-Orthodox sector (Israel Democracy Institute 2024; Bank of Israel 2024).
Only 1.7–2 % of Haredi men serve in the IDF, compared with 87 % of other Jewish men. Some 49,000 draft-age men receive exemptions every year (IDF Manpower Directorate 2025).
Roughly 70 % of Haredi boys’ schools teach virtually no mathematics, English, science, or civics after age 13 (State Comptroller 2023; Taub Center 2024). Male employment in the Haredi sector remains around 52%, compared with a national average of 87–90% for non-Haredi Jewish men (Bank of Israel 2024).

These gaps produce three concrete, measurable threats to Israel’s future:

A worsening security crisis
The IDF faces its most severe manpower shortage in decades. Reserve duty has exploded; many soldiers now serve over 100 days a year while funding the very exemptions they do not enjoy.
An economic time bomb
If current trends continue, by 2040, the Haredi sector is projected to comprise 25–30% of Israel’s population while contributing a shrinking share of tax revenue—warnings repeatedly issued by the Bank of Israel and the Finance Ministry.
The steady erosion of women’s status and safety
In growing parts of the country—Beit Shemesh, Jerusalem neighborhoods, Harish—women face routine harassment for “immodest” dress, gender-segregated buses persist despite Supreme Court rulings, and advertising featuring women is removed.
Most painfully, the State Comptroller’s 2024 report on October 7 found that urgent intelligence warnings from female observation soldiers at Nahal Oz were systematically downgraded or ignored, in part because of gendered attitudes. Fifteen of those young women were murdered; seven were kidnapped.

No one is demanding that Haredi Jews abandon Torah study. Jewish history is rich with models—Rashi, Maimonides, Rabbi Yitzhak Elchanan Spektor—of profound scholarship coexisting with economic productivity and civic responsibility. What is new, and what has proven unsustainable, is the post-1948 political arrangement under which the state finances, on an ever-expanding scale, a societal model that consciously opts out of military service and the core curriculum required for modern employment.

The solution can be gradual and respectful:

Tie educational funding to the teaching of core subjects and measurable rises in employment and national service.
Condition continued draft exemptions on military or civilian service beyond a reasonable quota.
Enforce existing laws against coercion and violence in public spaces.
Consider building and co-funding alternative Haredi communities based on the Kibbutz Model.

Israel is strong enough to insist that every community contribute to the common good without losing its Jewish character. But strength also requires honesty: the current model is draining our treasury, weakening our army, and marginalizing half our population. For the soldiers crowdfunding equipment, for the memory of the women of Nahal Oz, and for the future of a Jewish and democratic state, it is time to change course.