Charedi IDF soldiers threaten mass refusal: ‘You’re fighting my Charedi brothers? Then manage without us’”
The political storm surrounding Israel’s conscription law, cuts to daycare subsidies, and increasingly strict enforcement measures against yeshiva Bochurim and Charedi men classified as draft evaders is, in recent days, reaching a boiling point, even within the IDF itself.
Testimonies obtained by bechadrei chareidim from within Charedi military frameworks describe significant unrest, and even talk of coordinated acts of refusal, among Charedi soldiers serving in specially adapted IDF units.
In internal groups and closed conversations among soldiers in these units, the discourse is highly charged. “There is very strong talk here,” says a soldier serving in one of the technological tracks in the IDF.
“The guys are saying it very clearly: if there is no change from the state regarding all this chaos with the Chardiem, and if they don’t stop interfering with things like daycare subsidies, licenses and budgets, and the way they treat draft evaders, then Charedi soldiers in the IDF are planning to simply stop showing up one day.
A collective absence. The state needs to understand that we will not go along with this when this is how it treats the Chardiem.”
The tension between military duty and loyalty to the Charedi community is deeply affecting the soldiers, who feel that the entire Charedi public is under attack while they are serving as a “fig leaf” for the system.
“The groups here are buzzing and everyone talks about it all day,” the soldier continues. “It doesn’t feel right to any of us that we are sitting in the army while our brothers outside are fighting against the army and the system. We feel obligated to do something. We need to be part of the Charedi community, at the end of the day, we are Charedi.
There is enormous anger toward the behavior of the IDF and the state, and there has been talk among many guys that something needs to be done, not showing up for a week, or simply leaving the track, leaving the army.”
According to him, the situation is approaching an explosion: “The guys really mean it. They are waiting for the first one who gathers the courage to do it, to just stop showing up. Once it starts, more and more will follow. It’s very close.”
A central layer of the growing frustration is directed at the official mechanisms that established and operate the technological tracks and the organizations mediating between the soldiers and the IDF.
The soldiers accuse program administrators of conflicts of interest that prevent them from addressing the soldiers’ distress.
“The heads of those organizations and programs make money off each one of us who enlists, about 10,000 shekels per person,” the soldier claims. “They will never say things like this or support our protest, because their interests are financial.
Even the rabbis of those organizations are not yet in a position to officially stop it. But the ground is already moving independently, I personally heard of several who went to ask their rabbis, and their rabbi told them explicitly: don’t enlist right now, it’s better to stop.”
The soldiers emphasize that the real trigger for a dramatic wave of departures and abandonment of sensitive technological units in the IDF lies in the hands of senior rabbinic leadership:
“There are many guys just waiting for the final instruction from their rabbi or Rebbe. One day they’ll get the word, and that’s it, they’ll leave the army, simply stop coming.
Speaking for myself, I’m waiting for the moment this issue is brought before my Rebbe. If he says, ‘Guys, stop coming,’ then we’re out. Honestly, if I didn’t have a rabbi holding me back, I would have stopped coming to the army long ago. I would have told them: you’re fighting my Charedi brothers? Figure it out without us.”
