The majority of Israeli Ḥaredim do not perform mandatory military service, taking advantage of a special law dating back to the country’s founding that exempts yeshiva students from the draft. As a result, those ḥaredi men who would prefer not to pursue a life of religious study and teaching—the norm in their community—are discouraged from seeking jobs, since leaving yeshiva would make them eligible for conscription until they turn twenty-six. Israel’s religious parties have proposed a law that would lower that age by three to five years. While such a measure would ameliorate the problem of low workforce participating by ḥaredi men, and would be unlikely to reduce the number of Ḥaredim serving in the IDF, it is nonetheless unpopular because it further undergirds what many non-Ḥaredim see as a fundamentally unfair system making conscription mandatory for one part of the population and optional for another.

Reportedly, the Knesset has decided to table discussions of lowering the exemption age until after a budget is passed, but the issue is likely to return. Yisrael Groveis, a ḥaredi commentator, makes the case for the law:

Significant entry into the workforce will do much to alleviate the feeling that Ḥaredim are piggybacking on secular society. It is enough for a few thousand members of the ḥaredi sector to go to work, and not only will the secular public not be disadvantaged, but they will feel that at least they are not bearing the entire tax burden.

As part of the wave of protests against the current government (and its judicial reforms), many among the secular public have argued that they are “funding the evasion”—paying the living costs of ḥaredi society, from yeshiva and kollel budgets to balance grants for ḥaredi cities and social-security allowances. If Ḥaredim enter the workforce en masse, at least this claim will drop from the agenda. There will be greater justification for funding yeshiva and kollel institutions since the ḥaredi public [would be bearing] the tax burden like any other group in the country.

Some have made the argument that ḥaredi entry into the workforce will create greater identification with Israel, and this, in turn, will lead to greater participation in the IDF. I cannot pass judgment on this assessment; certainly, such trends will be vehemently opposed within ḥaredi communities. But even absent this, the move is both required and justified. It is an imperfect solution to a thorny issue.

A good move toward minimizing the outrage, even if only a little, is for ḥaredi politicians to lower their voices—as they have recently started doing. Above all, we need a good dose of humility, [and need] to recognize that those serving in the IDF deserve unique benefits.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.