The Religious Zionist Party leadership: Neither religious, nor Zionist - opinion

In the lead-up to the winter session of the Knesset, all discussion surrounded the possibility that the government, in the middle of a prolonged war with a lengthening casualty list, would pass a law exempting all haredi (ultra-Orthodox) men of conscription age.

It now appears that all this was a political ruse. The trolling of the public by figures like Housing Minister Yitzhak Goldknopf threatening that the haredi parties would leave the government without such an exemption and other hurtful comments about the haredim deserving both the exemption and continued financial aid turned out to be what we call in Israeli politics a negotiating goat, an expendable bargaining chip. 

The actual government plan is to create a de facto exemption by enshrining inequitable financial support for haredi yeshiva students aged 18 to 26, effectively maintaining the status quo without any change to the conscription law.

If this happens, it will reduce the future possibility of mass participation by haredim in the IDF to near zero. This is coming, at a time when the country is at war on multiple fronts, hundreds of soldiers have been killed in action and thousands have been wounded in the past year.

This will be a strategic and moral disaster. While I have zero expectations from the haredi politicians and rabbinic leadership, we should expect more from the prime minister and the finance minister, who have the overall responsibility for the strategic and economic leadership of the country.

Unavoidable conclusions

It is hard to avoid one of two conclusions. Either Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, head of the Religious Zionist Party, actually believe that haredim should not only be exempt from military service but should be financially rewarded for doing so, or they are simply playing the worst and most cynical politics at our expense to protect their coalition and positions of power. 

There has been an increasing disconnect between the reality of the religious Zionist community, who have given their all and then more for the war effort with a significantly higher number of causalities than their demographic weighting, and the lining up of the key religious Zionist politicians to protect the haredim from any sanctions due to their near complete absence from the battlefield. 

Once it became clear, on day one of the new Knesset session, that there would be no blanket army exemption for young haredim, members of Smotrich’s and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s parties signed on a draft bill together with all the haredi MKs to secure daycare subsidies for haredi draft dodgers.

This, amid sensitive budget negotiations for 2025, reports that the payments made by the government for the families of fallen soldiers will be frozen in the coming year. The contrast and priorities could not be starker or more disheartening.

During the most recent Knesset faction meeting of his Religious Zionist Party, Smotrich welled up with emotion as he called out to his haredi brothers to take their part in the IDF. However, these can only be described as crocodile tears at a time when he intends to give a de facto exemption to all haredim and continue to subsidize this moral dereliction. His party may be called the Religious Zionist Party, but to many of us, his positions are neither religious nor Zionist.

The writer, a founding partner of Goldrock Capital, is the founder of The Institute for Jewish and Zionist Research. He is a former chairman of Gesher, World Bnei Akiva, and the Coalition for Haredi Employment.