Thousands of people took to the streets of Tel Aviv on Thursday to protest the exemption of ultra-Orthodox from mandatory military service.
Ultra-Orthodox Israelis have long held a privileged position in that society. Their religious schools, or yeshivas, receive generous government subsidies. Yet young men of the Haredim, as they are known in Hebrew, are, in all practical terms, exempt from mandatory military service.
In 1998, Israel’s Supreme Court ripped up the longstanding exemption, telling the government that allowing Haredim to get out of conscription violated equal protection principles. In the decades since, successive governments and parliaments have tried to solve the issue, only to be told repeatedly by the court that their efforts were illegal.
Now, those piecemeal attempts to maintain the Haredi exemption may be running out. The latest government attempt to paper over the problem, in place since 2018, expires at the end of March.
“There is no unity without equality!” protesters were heard chanting while holding Israeli flags.
Israeli opposition leader and former prime minister Yair Lapid has long criticized the exemption, saying in a post on X in March: “It is not possible for 66,000 ultra-Orthodox young men of conscription age to receive a blanket exemption while the working and paying public continues to bear the entire burden.”
CNN’s Mick Krever contributed reporting to this post.
Source link: https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-03-14-24/index.html