FADC fights over religious women’s army exemptions

The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Sunday debated extensive IDF exemptions for religious women.

The exemption is extended by consensus approximately every three years.

The current extension is due to expire on July 6 and it is expected to be extended for another three years, but several parties used the debate to air grievances with how the law is administered.

FADC Chairman Ram Ben Barak focused on the phenomenon of secular women pretending to be religious to try to avoid IDF service and the need to crack down on this phenomenon.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, UTJ MK Meir Porush said that women were being cross-examined too much over this issue and that a streamlined process established in 2012, which was less burdensome, was not being followed sufficiently.

Porush said the streamlined task force for examining women’s exemption requests was also established to avoid court involvement.

IDF Brig.-Gen. Amir Vadmani, a senior human resources officer, said that over the last five years there has been a steady, but plateauing decline in men and women recruited to the IDF across all sectors.

Over the last year, he said that 67% of eligible men and 55% of eligible women were drafted into the IDF with 35-36% of women who received an exemption, getting it on the basis of religion.

In absolute numbers, 18,900 women requested an exemption from the IDF for religious reasons in 2020, with all but 219 approved upfront.

Since 2021, a special task force for handling certain suspicious cases has revoked the exemptions of five women who were originally granted religious exemptions after finding that they did not actually comply with a religious lifestyle.

Likud MK Shlomo Karai presented almost 600 reservations to extending the law, including procedural issues which will send it back to the Knesset House Committee, before it can proceed for its second and third readings.

Within the religious-Zionist community a very large percentage of women who do not serve in the IDF perform a year or two of national service in areas such as education, assisting the poor or aiding the elderly.

There has also been an increase in recent years of religious-Zionist women who wish to serve in the IDf, despite a backlash from certain portions of the more rightwing religious-Zionist community.

In the haredi sector, far fewer women perform national service.

The vast majority of religious-Zionist men serve in the IDF and they make up a larger percentage of combat soldiers and officers than the relative percentage of religious-Zionists in the country.

Still, today, only a very low percentage of Haredi men serve in the IDF and this is a hotly debated issue.

THE FOREIGN AFFAIRS and Defense Committee debated a three-year extension on military exemptions for religious women yesterday. Some 55% of all women serve.