In 1948, Ben Gurion set the precedent for granting a draft exemption for full-time yeshiva students. He also made it the law that the IDF would have kosher kitchens, and no bread on Passover, wanting it to be the army of all Israel’s Jews. At that time, there were only 400 yeshiva students getting exemptions. Now, with the growth of the yeshiva world, the number of draft exemptions and deferments for yeshiva students has grown to more than 40,000, a full 18 percent of the draftee pool.

With the country’s military burden in the last four months at unprecedented levels, and a new law to extend military service for draftees and to double the time reservists must serve each year, the situation is untenable. Everyone in the country, except the haredim themselves, understand that this can’t go on. The drafting of yeshiva students would give the army six new battalions. Who’s to say that if such battalions had been in place on October 7, the border with Gaza would have been secured and hundreds of lives saved?

This morning, petitioners went to the High Court of Justice to demand that the draft be implemented immediately, arguing against the government’s decision to keep the status quo until a new draft law can be enacted on March 31. Given the nature of coalition government, such a law will be hard to arrive at without bringing down the government, which it has done in the past, or will be an exercise in maintaining the status quo by haredi coalition members. No one in Israel, except haredim, wants either.

The Movement for Quality of Government in Israel chairman, Dr. Eliad Shraga, told the judges of the High Court : “In our distorted democracy there are citizens with only responsibilities, like Druze and Circassians, citizens with both rights and responsibilities like the majority of the public drafted into military service, and a group with only rights – who don’t need to pay taxes or have required studies – the yeshiva students who are exempt from all obligations. There were thousands of families with loved ones who fell and were injured in battle,” said Shraga, “but meanwhile, there were “thousands not giving a shoulder to carry the stretcher,” using a military idiom for “sharing a burden.”

State Attorney’s Office representative Avi Milikovsky argued that an injunction for an immediate draft would impact individuals who were under the impression that they would not be immediately enlisted, and they could be in the middle of academic studies, on a flight abroad, or otherwise indisposed.

Yes. Like the rest of the soldiers figting in Gaza, whom no one asked if perhaps they were busy with other things and preferred not to fight a war!

In a way, perhaps, it is a good thing that this issue has reached its current boiling point. Even the most cynical haredi politician must understand that this is now a matter of life or death: if you want to live in this country, you have to have military training, and you have to be able to shoot, if only to protect your own family. It is to be hoped that this terrible injustice driving hatred between Israeli citizens can finally be put to rest.

I’d like to explain something that isn’t clear to many people. The Muslim religion based on the Koran, teaches that once a country is taken over by Muslims, it belongs to them forever, even if they are subsequently defeated. So when Muslim demonstrators talk about the Israeli “occupation,” they are saying that all of Israel, which was briefly (historically speaking) colonized by Muslims, is forever Muslim and Jews are therefore “occupying” “their” land. This is an eternal problem that has no rational solution.

I point this out as a way of warning countries that have never been Muslim but are in the process of being taken over by them, for example, Great Britain. You have government ministers terrorized in Parliament, the streets occupied by belligerent Muslim protestors, and new movements to vote in Muslims so they can have a majority in Parliament.

You are in the snake’s jaws, Great Britain, and in the process of being digested. Too bad you taught your police force not to be Islamophobic, and they are now paralyzed and unable to enforce the law. It is hard to see how this can be reversed. But once this great, Christian democracy is swallowed, it will forever be Muslim, just as Spain is still considered Muslim by the Islamic forces who are planning, believe me, to get rid of the Christian “occupation” there as soon as they can.

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