Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled in a landmark case that students at an ultra-Orthodox Jewish seminary must be drafted into the army.
Young men who participated in full-time religious studies had long been exempted from the draft, but legal arrangements that allowed the practice to continue recently expired.
In Israel, the military is often described as the “people’s army” and the issue of large-scale exemptions for ultra-Orthodox Jewish men from the draft has been a bone of contention for decades.
The pressures of the current war in Gaza – with Israeli military leaders complaining of a shortage of combat soldiers – have led to renewed demands for a more equal sharing of the security burden.
The ruling by Israel’s Supreme Court means tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox men may now face conscription.
The court also ruled that public funding for Jewish seminaries whose students evade the draft should be frozen.
