Israel has spent decades bracing for the enemies it can see: Iranian centrifuges, Hamas tunnels, Hezbollah rockets. It has built one of the most sophisticated defense establishments on earth to battle them. But the danger that may do the most lasting damage is growing inside the Knesset, the yeshivahs and the birth statistics themselves—and no missile-defense system can stop it.
That threat is Haredi exceptionalism. And Israel’s leaders built it themselves.
Haredim make up less than 15% of the Israeli population. Yet their influence is vastly disproportionate to their numbers because of the nation’s fragmented political system, in which ultra-Orthodox parties are usually critical to forming coalition governments.
Using their power as kingmakers, the Haredi parties have pushed governments to preserve exemptions from military service for tens of thousands of yeshivah students, protect schools that refuse to teach core secular subjects, expand welfare benefits and strengthen the Orthodox monopoly over religious life, despite opposition from most secular Israelis and much of the Diaspora.
Haredi families average six to seven children—roughly double the birthrate of other Israeli Jews. Israel’s leading demographers project that by mid-century, Haredim could account for 24% to 38% of all Israelis. Every year that passes increases both their numbers and their political leverage.
Benjamin Netanyahu has been especially dependent on the religious parties. Keeping them satisfied has been essential to maintaining his governing coalition, and now, as his tenure nears its end, he needs them more than ever if he hopes to remain in power. As a result, their demands continue to take precedence over reforms supported by a broad majority of Israelis, particularly those related to military service.
What began as David Ben-Gurion’s original exemption—intended for a few hundred exceptional scholars—has evolved into a blanket exclusion for an entire community.
The Oct. 7 war turned a simmering political dispute into a national crisis.
Hundreds of thousands of Israelis answered the call to reserve duty. More than 900 lost their lives. Families endured repeated deployments while businesses struggled without employees, and parents went months without seeing their children.
At precisely the moment when the country needed every able-bodied citizen, thousands of Haredi men continued to avoid military service.
The Israel Defense Forces has repeatedly warned of severe manpower shortages, and Israel’s courts have ordered the government to enforce the draft of Haredim. Successive governments, however, have refused to apply the law. Given the reaction to the 16 arrests this year, it’s hard to imagine any government arresting thousands of Haredi draft dodgers; those arrests triggered violent demonstrations that blocked highways, shut down rail traffic, attacked detention facilities and assaulted police officers, including one whose son was killed in Gaza, and even targeted the home of a Supreme Court justice.
Instead of enforcing existing law, the Netanyahu government has sought legislation that would equate Torah study with military service and limit the arrest of draft evaders. In 2024, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara ordered the Labor Ministry to cut daycare subsidies for the children of ultra-Orthodox yeshivah students who disobey military draft orders.
Netanyahu, however, wants to restore such subsidies. In other words, the government has moved from enforcement to reversal.
Whenever the issue of Haredi draft dodging comes up, I’m reminded of the U.S. military’s practice of shaving recruits’ heads as part of standardization. Imagine if the IDF did that to the Haredim. Instead, the army bends over backward to accommodate the demands of even the more moderate Orthodox soldiers who may refuse to serve in units with women or to be trained by them. The army recently backed down after leaders of Hesder yeshivas (institutions that combine Torah study with military service) threatened to stop sending their students to the Armored Corps over the proposed inclusion of women in tanks alongside men.
The ultra-Orthodox fear that their children will lose their religion in a secular army, though thousands of observant Jews proudly serve in the IDF. Nevertheless, many Israelis would gladly accept some alternative form of national service for those unwilling to join. Even that compromise has largely been rejected by Haredi leadership, which insists that Torah study alone fulfills their national obligation.
What began as David Ben-Gurion’s original exemption—intended for a few hundred exceptional scholars—has evolved into a blanket exclusion for an entire community. This is no longer simply a question of fairness. It is a question of national survival.
Today, roughly one-quarter of Israelis reaching military age are Haredi. By 2050, that figure could approach 40%. If current exemption rates continue, then the burden on the shrinking pool of secular and national-religious soldiers will become unsustainable. As that burden grows, reservists will serve longer and more frequently, imposing growing costs on families, employers and the economy.
Equally concerning is the economic model that successive governments have enabled. Many Haredi schools provide no instruction in mathematics, English or science, leaving graduates ill-equipped for modern employment. Hence, the employment rate among Haredi men remains dramatically below that of other Jewish Israelis, while many employed Haredi women work in lower-paying or part-time positions.
The result is that Haredim account for only a small share of Israel’s tax base while receiving a disproportionate share of government benefits.
State transfers comprise more than one-quarter of the average Haredi household income—more than double the share for other Jewish households. Economists estimate that nearly 6% of the state budget directly supports the Haredi sector, while the Israel Democracy Institute warns that failure to integrate Haredim into the workforce could reduce Israel’s GDP per capita by more than 10%.
Taken together, these trends deepen the financial strain that will coincide with the growth of Israel’s defense budget as U.S. military assistance is phased out. Israel will have to manage its security threats while simultaneously sustaining a shrinking tax base, expanding welfare obligations and declining military participation.
Ironically, Israel’s Arab citizens increasingly demonstrate the opposite trajectory. While significant socioeconomic gaps remain, Arab participation in higher education, professional occupations and the workforce has steadily increased as more seek to improve their standard of living. The Institute for National Security Studies has noted that whereas much of the Arab sector is moving toward greater economic integration, Haredi leadership largely seeks to preserve the existing system of dependency and exemption.
The Haredi leadership is no longer content merely to preserve its own way of life; it increasingly seeks to extend its religious norms into Israel’s public sphere.
For years, the ultra-Orthodox have imposed their standards at the Western Wall, where restrictions on women’s prayer and the rejection of non-Orthodox religious practices have alienated many Israelis and much of the Diaspora. Their ambitions now extend well beyond holy sites. In Bnei Brak, municipal rabbis recently ordered gender segregation on the sidewalks of two major streets. At the national level, Netanyahu’s coalition has advanced legislation allowing universities and colleges to offer gender-segregated master’s and doctoral programs—a proposal so troubling that Israel’s university presidents and medical school deans publicly warned it would undermine academic freedom and equality.
These are not isolated disputes. They reflect a broader effort to redefine Israel’s public institutions according to ultra-Orthodox religious doctrine.
The television series “Autonomies” imagined Israel divided after a civil war into separate secular and religious states. Some Israelis saw this as more utopian than dystopian, but the reality is likely to be a bloodless coup in which the ever-growing religious minority gains effective veto power over the country’s military, economic, educational and social policies.
The consequences would be profound: increasing emigration by secular Israelis, declining immigration by Jews who do not wish to live under expanding religious restrictions, chronic manpower shortages in the IDF, slower economic growth, mounting welfare costs and a steadily weakening capacity to defend the state.
Unless Israel creates incentives to integrate Haredim into the military and workforce, penalizes those who evade national service, conditions public funding on teaching core educational subjects, and reforms an electoral system that allows small sectarian parties to dictate national policy, demographics, not missiles or terrorists, may pose the greatest threat to Israel’s future.
