Ultra-Orthodox Jews In Israel Will Now Have Skin In The Game

A 2020 poll conducted in Israel showed that 84% of the ultra-Orthodox community supporting annexing Palestinian lands to be used for Jewish settlements. It is easy to take such a position when you and yours are not the ones that will bleed and die as a result. But this may be changing. "Israel’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled unanimously that the military must begin drafting ultra-Orthodox men for compulsory service," the New York Post reports, "a landmark decision that could lead to the collapse of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition as Israel continues to wage war in Gaza." The article explains:

    The historic ruling effectively puts an end to a decades-old system that granted ultra-Orthodox men broad exemptions from military service while maintaining mandatory enlistment for the country’s secular Jewish majority. The arrangement, deemed discriminatory by critics, has created a deep chasm in Israel’s Jewish majority over who should shoulder the burden of protecting the country.

    The court struck down a law that codified exemptions in 2017, but repeated court extensions and government delaying tactics over a replacement dragged out a resolution for years. The court ruled that in the absence of a law, Israel’s compulsory military service applies to the ultra-Orthodox like any other citizen.

Consequently, "[s]ome 66,000 ultra-Orthodox men are now eligible for enlistment, according to Shuki Friedman, an expert on religion and state affairs and the vice-president of the Jewish People Policy Institute, a Jerusalem think tank." 

    This will be a big boon to Israel's military ambitions if it goes forward because "[t]he community has a high birthrate, making it the fastest-growing segment of the population, at about 4% annually." As Edward Luttwak writes about at Un-Herd, in his article "Who will win a post-heroic war?," the reason that the Soviet Union, Germany, and the Western Allies could throw away millions of lives in World War II was because "the wars of history were fought by 'spare' male children."

Even as late as the mid-20th century, the average European family had several children. In agricultural households, one male could inherit the family’s land, another might advantageously marry a land-owning wife, and one more might go into the Church — or off to war. If he failed to return, the survivors might miss him most intensely, but the family would not be extinguished. Today, however, with the average fertility of women across Europe less than two and still falling — the EU average was 1.46 in 2022 — there are no spare children.

Thus, European countries cannot tolerate even very modest casualty rates. The same goes for Russia, China, the United States, or pretty much any other country in the world. Israel, however, is different. Luttwak explains:

As for Israel, it is the only country in the world where even secular, university-educated, professionally employed, married women have two or more children on average, with more than three children on average for the religious. This high fertility rate is the fundamental reason why Israel is not post-heroic, and will not be forced to abandon its current military plans because of combat casualties. 

Thanks to this recent Israeli Supreme Court decision, the IDF will have even more bodies to throw into the meat grinder.