Think about it. The Israel Defense Forces isn’t only suffering from a shortage of front-line troops. It also faces a grave shortage of munitions: guns, bullets, mortars, drones, artillery shells, missiles, interceptors and the like.
Israel must massively expand its domestic weapons industry, but it needs more workers to do so. At the same time, the governing coalition has collapsed under the weight of the Haredi military exemption.
Here’s a solution for both problems: Let Haredi men work in Israeli arms factories without being drafted, and count hours worked toward mandatory national service. This enables them to meet one of Israel’s vital defense needs without submitting to the control of a military establishment they don’t trust.
In the 10 months after Hamas attacked on Oct. 7, 2023, the United States sent Israel more than 50,000 tons of equipment and munitions. That includes 4,100 tons of jet fuel, 57,000 artillery shells, 36,000 rounds of heavy ammunition, 20,000 rifles, 13,980 anti-tank missiles and 21,500 bombs. According to the Israeli Defense Ministry, these deliveries were “crucial for sustaining the IDF’s operational capabilities during the ongoing war.”
So we needed a major infusion of foreign weapons to fight Hamas, an armed group controlling 141 square miles with an annual budget of less than $2.5 billion. Now imagine how much more materiel is required to defend against even more formidable foes such as Iran ($7.4 billion defense budget) and Turkey ($32 billion defense budget).
No longer can Israel rely on the United States for emergency resupply—not when 60% of Americans hold an unfavorable view of Israel. Instead, Jerusalem must ramp up weapons manufacturing inside Israel. In fact, the Israeli government already has a 10-year plan to invest $110 billion in developing domestic arms manufacturing. It is signing contracts left and right to buy ammunition, lasers and bombs from Rafael and Elbit. So far, so good.
Still, there’s a fundamental problem with ramping up domestic production: Where will the workers come from?
Israeli workers are already stretched thin. Unemployment is at 2.8%, well below the 3.8% to 4.5% that the U.S. Federal Reserve considers “full employment.” And the country can’t just produce “enough” weapons. It must produce a surplus of them, in addition to selling them abroad to get the economies of scale for a sustainable arms industry.
I propose the idea of recruiting workers from the yeshivahs. The Haredi male workforce participation rate is only 55%. If it could be brought up to 80%—the current workforce participation rate for Haredi women—that would be 333,000 more people available to work in the weapons factories. (A third of a million workers should be plenty. Turkey’s Directorate of Communications boasts that its entire domestic defense industry employs just 90,000 people.)
How to entice Haredi men to work in the weapons factories? Right now, yeshivah students are only exempt from the draft if studying is their full-time profession. The government should simply permit yeshivah students to work in an Israeli defense manufacturer without triggering a draft requirement and count hours worked in a weapons factory toward their required 32 months of military service.
Here’s how the policy could work operationally:
• Anyone aged 23 to 30 can work for a certified defense contractor without losing any benefits or triggering a draft requirement. For every 2,200 hours worked, that counts as one year of military service.
• The government creates several 10,000-dunam military-industrial free enterprise zones near Haredi population centers: Jerusalem, Bnei Brak, Modi’in and Beit Shemesh.
• Anyone can easily set up a defense manufacturing company in these zones, with expedited building permits, ample infrastructure, preferred access to defense contracts and streamlined export permits.
• The Transportation Ministry establishes round-the-clock bus lines from Haredi population centers and yeshivahs to the four military industrial zones.
A potential resolution
Can Haredim create and operate a factory that requires strict adherence to technical minutiae and safety procedures? Go visit the obsessively kosher matzah factories in Bnei Brak if you have any doubts.
Will Haredim succeed in the international arms market? Throughout history, some of the biggest suppliers to national armies have been meticulously observant Jews, including Samson Wertheimer to the Prussians; Issachar ben Yehuda ha-Levi to the Lithuanians; and Berek Sonnenberg to the Polish, French, Austrians and Russian.
Will Haredi leaders let this happen? Israeli citizens don’t need their permission. Right now, a primary reason so many students under the age of 30 stay in yeshivah is the risk of being drafted if they leave. All that needs to be done is to let students who don’t want to be in yeshivah walk away and get a job in a weapons factory.
This policy can be plug-and-play, regardless of how heavy the hammer comes down on draft dodgers. Even if the draft exemption is preserved, the promise of a safe job in a Haredi-run factory will still attract tens of thousands of yeshivah backbenchers into work. And it’s a compromise for those who cannot countenance being drafted, kicking and screaming, into the formal military.
Israel needs to make more of its own weapons, and Israel needs Haredim to start serving in its national defense. This is how to solve both problems at once.
