The Media Line: Israeli Opposition Lawmaker: Coalition ‘Is Reviving Irrelevant 2022 Text To Appease Ultra-Orthodox’ 

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Israeli Opposition Lawmaker: Coalition ‘Is Reviving Irrelevant 2022 Text To Appease Ultra-Orthodox’ 

MK Efrat Rayten Marom warns that the proposed draft law ignores army needs as the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee intensifies the debate 

By Gabriel Colodro/The Media Line 

The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee entered a marathon round of sessions this week, with committee chairman Boaz Bismuth (Likud) advancing legislation to regulate ultra-Orthodox military service. While coalition members defended the urgency of the discussions, opposition lawmakers argued that the measures recycle outdated formulas that neither expand enlistment nor uphold equality before the law. 

“Bismuth is not proposing anything new. He is reviving an irrelevant 2022 draft that was meant as a stopgap in completely different circumstances, before October 7,” Member of Knesset Efrat Rayten Marom (The Democrats) told The Media Line after the committee session. “Back then, the idea was to combine some limited military service with integration into the labor market. Now it is clear he intends to bend to ultra-Orthodox demands and remove oversight mechanisms—unlike [recently dismissed committee chairman] Yuli Edelstein, who insisted on keeping them in his version of the bill before he was ousted as chair.” 

Inside the room, the atmosphere reflected the broader political impasse. Members spoke over one another, raising their voices as they argued about precedents, court rulings, and the balance of power between the Knesset and the defense minister. “Tomorrow the army needs soldiers,” Bismuth insisted, presenting three debates scheduled during recess as proof of seriousness. But a colleague cut him off mid-sentence: “The army said it needs recruits, not this law.” The interruptions, appeals to order, and sharp exchanges left a chamber unable to agree on whether it was legislating for national security or political survival. 

Legislative history weighed heavily on the debate. A series of laws and amendments since 2002 repeatedly tried—and failed—to impose enlistment targets, with Israel’s High Court of Justice striking them down for lacking effective enforcement. 

Subsequent amendments—known as Amendment 19 in 2014 and Amendment 21 in 2015—sought to establish annual enlistment targets, but these too collapsed when it became clear that missing the quotas carried no consequences. In 2017, Amendment 22 attempted to add collective financial sanctions, while Amendment 26 in 2022 extended deferments once again, this time under the banner of “integration into the workforce.” Each effort ended in failure, with the court repeatedly ruling that quotas without enforcement mechanisms could not stand. 

That record loomed large as the committee weighed Bismuth’s initiative. Elazar Stern of the centrist Yesh Atid party reminded colleagues that the system of annual deferments has existed for decades, warning that rolling them over without real penalties undermines both enlistment and fairness. A representative of the State Comptroller’s Office echoed him: “If you place targets and nothing happens when they are missed, the system collapses.” Opposition lawmaker Chili Tropper (Blue and White – National Unity) sharpened the point with arithmetic. “If the law sets a quota of 5,000 recruits a year but nearly all applicants claim full-time study, the math cannot work,” he said, pointing to what he called a built-in contradiction. 

The contrast with Edelstein was repeatedly invoked. Before his removal as committee chair, Edelstein had prepared a draft that preserved certain enforcement tools and insisted on supervisory mechanisms to ensure compliance. Bismuth, in Rayten Marom’s telling, chose the opposite path—bringing back a text from 2022 and softening it to meet ultra-Orthodox demands. For the opposition, this shift symbolized a coalition more concerned with keeping Haredi parties on board than with solving the Israel Defense Forces’ manpower crisis. 

For Rayten Marom, the debate was about optics, not solutions. “There is an effort to signal seriousness to Netanyahu’s Haredi partners, but it is impossible to design a law that simultaneously provides the army with the manpower it desperately needs and satisfies the principle of equality that the High Court has upheld for years,” she said. “Meanwhile, the same small group of reservists is carrying hundreds of days of service alone, paying a very heavy personal price.” 

The otherwise legalistic tone broke abruptly when families of hostages were invited to speak. Shay Dickmann, cousin of Carmel Gat, who was kidnapped on October 7 and later murdered in Hamas captivity, confronted lawmakers with a piercing challenge. She accused them of “finding ways to exempt people from service while those who do serve are sent into death traps,” warning that the principle of equal burden had become an empty slogan. “Why should I send my son to the army when the state abandons those it already sent?” she asked, her words silencing the room. 

Other relatives expanded on the point with harrowing detail. They described how hostages who survived months underground were ultimately killed when Israeli forces approached the tunnels where they were held, and how mothers had received phone calls warning that their sons were in imminent danger. Several spoke of reservists in their families who had been called into Gaza round after round, while others their age were listed in yeshiva rosters but spent their days at the beach or running businesses abroad. Their testimony underscored the widening gulf between the formulas debated in parliament and the lived reality of families carrying the cost of a war now nearing two years. 

As lawmakers argued about legal clauses, sanctions, and quotas, relatives of hostages pleaded for a state that would protect soldiers already in uniform rather than legislate mass exemptions. The silence that followed Dickmann’s words contrasted sharply with the chaos that had dominated the earlier exchanges. 

Later, Rayten Marom tied the legislative stalemate directly to the war. “As long as the war continues, there is a complete disconnect between the army’s real needs and a law that grants blanket exemptions to the ultra-Orthodox. Such a law deepens alienation within society,” she explained. “I oppose this endless war and want to bring it to an end. While the government drags us into a war with no purpose, the security establishment keeps saying it needs more soldiers. The government can no longer place the burden only on those who already serve.” 

Outside the chamber, events underscored the urgency. During the session, a Houthi drone launched from Yemen struck the passenger hall of Israel’s southernmost airport, near the Red Sea resort city of Eilat. The attack, which caused damage but no fatalities, was not mentioned in the committee. Rayten Marom, asked about it afterward, did not hide her frustration. “While the committee is wasting time debating how to grant more exemptions, the country is under attack,” she said. “This is exactly why the government must stop this discriminatory proposal and return the conversation to where it belongs: securing Israel and sharing the burden fairly.”