“Israel has no right to exist,” Israel’s Chief Rabbis say upon Haredim draft
Occupied Palestine (QNN)- Israel’s chief Sephardic rabbis have officially instructed Yeshiva students to neglect army recruitment offices, encouraging them to “favour prison and budget deprivations than cooperating with the Israeli army.”
They stated that the law aimed to “destroy the Torah”.
On Tuesday, Gallant legislated the mandatory conscription of 3,000 Haredim in the military.
Gallant announced that the issuance of draft orders could start as early as next month.
Rabbi Dov Landau, one of the chief rabbis of the Haredim, attacked War Minister Yoav Gallant’s decision to call up 3,000 Haredi Jews for military service, saying “a state that recruits yeshivas has no right to exist.”
“The army is at war with us, and wants to usurp the Torah students’ rights, which is complete suicide,” he said, adding “in the absence of the regime, and amid the army’s war against us, what is the point of standing for what? The government is completely and absolutely against us.”
Upon discourse regarding the mandatory conscription of the ultra-orthodox community, the chief rabbis convened and urged the Haredim to divert from drafting orders and abstain from going to recruitment offices.
Landau requested that Rabbi Haim Aharon Kaufman, the chief of the Haredim community, relay his opinion to his Sephardic and Hasidic counterparts and form a unified stance against military conscription.
The head of the Slabdoka Yeshiva, Rabbi Moshe Hillel Hirsch, ordered students to influence the ultra-orthodox youth who do not study in schools of religion against any military conscription commands.
In response to Landau’s statements, leaders of the Sephardic Jewish religious schools in the West, some of whom are members of the Council of Torah Sages (Shas), convened and issued a Torah edict “prohibiting entry into the army.”
The signed edict further prohibited any presence in drafting offices.
In late June, the Israeli Supreme Court unanimously voted for the conscription of Haredi Jews into the military, and the halt of all subsidies and funds allocated for institutions that do not comply with the ruling, affirming that “the state has no authority to exempt them.”
The court ruled the regime was carrying out “invalid selective enforcement, which represents a serious violation of the rule of law, and the principle according to which all individuals are equal before the law … In the midst of a grueling war, the burden of inequality is harsher than ever and demands a solution.”
The war cabinet on Sunday also discussed extending military service in the Israeli army to 3 years, as reported by the Israeli broadcaster Kan.
