A high-ranking figure in the Israeli Finance Ministry’s budget division has concluded that the newly introduced proposal dealing with chareidi conscription is unlikely to boost enlistment and may actually shrink the number of bnei yeshiva entering the army, Channel 12 reported.
This evaluation was submitted to Miri Frenkel Shor, the legal advisor of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. As Channel 12 described it, the budget team argues that the legislation scraps the only tools that have ever had real influence—namely the financial penalties affecting yeshiva support and childcare assistance—while at the same time padding the enlistment statistics by counting chareidim who take on civilian national service instead of military service.
The Finance Ministry has consistently maintained that without serious consequences for avoiding the draft, nothing changes. In a written submission to the same Knesset committee earlier this year, Yogev Gardos, who heads the ministry’s budget department, stressed that consequences would only work if they hit families where it matters financially, last “over a long period of time,” and cannot be sidestepped through outside assistance.
Gardos noted that options on the table for sanctions include withholding daycare support, cutting yeshiva funding, restricting discounts on National Insurance Institute payments, removing housing benefits, and canceling reduced municipal taxes.
He also emphasized that any penalties must be directed at the individual who avoids the draft, not tied to general enlistment quotas. If they are based on group performance, he explained, the motivation to enlist disappears entirely.
These same concerns were raised again in a 16-page analysis the ministry sent to the Defense Ministry in December, along with a follow-up internal memo circulated a few days later.
Join an army that is run by atheistic leftist cowards that lock up soldiers who shoot the enemy. Soldiers are forced to follow suicidal orders like the religious soldier who was ordered to enter buildings full of Hamas terrorists. Instead of having a plane Drop a bomb on the building and no Israeli soldiers get hurt they sent in the young soldiers who go T killed or wounded.