Hundreds of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews protested in Tel Aviv Oct. 30 against moves to draft them into the Israel Defense Forces.
Since Israel’s Supreme Court ruled last year that the longstanding exemption from service was illegal, over 870 Haredi men have been arrested for refusing a draft order. Israel’s parliament is now debating legislation that would allow some exceptions.
The battle over drafting the Haredim, as the ultra-Orthodox are known, is portrayed in the capitalist media in Israel and the U.S. as a fight between selfish religious fanatics and patriotic Israelis who believe it’s “unfair” that the Haredim don’t carry their share of the “burden” of defending Israel. This dispute has heated up amid Israel’s unfinished war to defeat Hamas.
But this misses what is really at stake. For Israel to exist as a refuge from Jew-hatred and pogroms it must be for all Jews, without distinction or conditions.
Israel’s “Law of Return” — which grants Jews the right to seek refuge in Israel — is based on secular criteria, not religious beliefs. Anyone whose parents, grandparents or spouse are Jewish or who has converted to Judaism has an unencumbered right to citizenship.
This reflects the fact that Jews are an oppressed nationality worldwide.
During the Holocaust, the Nazis murdered 6 million Jews, two out of every three Jews in Europe. They did not decide who to send to the death camps based on religious criteria. All Jews were targeted. Israel came into existence when there was no place else for Jews to go after the imperialist rulers in London and Washington slammed their doors shut to Jews fleeing the Holocaust.
The origins of many of the ultra-Orthodox Jews were in Poland, where 85% of the Jews were slaughtered. Among the ultra-Orthodox Hasidim, the numbers were higher.
Jailing Haredi men who refuse to serve in the Israeli army because of their religious belief would send the message that Israel is a refuge for some Jews, not all.
Haredim men who studied Torah full time were granted exemption from the draft when Israel was founded in 1948. At the time there were roughly 400 ultra-Orthodox Torah students. Since then the Haredim have grown to be 13% to 14% of Israel’s population — more than 1.3 million people — with some 63,000 Haredi men of draft age.
The debate heated up after Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas slaughtered 1,200 people in Israel, the worst anti-Jewish pogrom since the Holocaust. More than 1,100 Israeli soldiers have died since then in battle with Hamas.
But this isn’t really about Haredi joining the army. Thousands of Haredi volunteered to join after Oct. 7. And there is an all-Haredi battalion.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu favors keeping the exemption. Meritocratic layers of the middle class in Israel, including parts of the military brass and rival capitalist political parties that want to oust him, use this to foster resentment toward the Haredim and toward him.
As the worldwide crisis of capitalism worsens and the old imperialist world order unravels, capitalist ruling classes around the world will turn to Jew-hatred as a tool to divide and defeat the working class.
This is not a Middle East question. Acts of violence against Jews are on the rise, from Europe to the U.S.
There is no way to eradicate Jew-hatred under capitalism. But the fight to defend Jews today — and to defend the existence of the one country that offers them an unconditional refuge — is decisive for advancing the interests of workers and all the oppressed. It’s a key part of the longer-term fight of the working class to take power out of the hands of the ruling class and open the road to a socialist future. And this is the only way to end Jew-hatred forever.