TEL AVIV, israel — Among the thousands of Israelis who filled the streets of central Tel Aviv on Saturday night to protest the exemption of their ultra-Orthodox countrymen from military service, Yaakov Ben Horim and his best friend were particularly angry.
The two men met 50 years ago, when they served together as combat soldiers during the state of Israel’s infancy.
“We barely knew what the state would look like then — it was, like us, still a child. But we knew that we must serve in the army. If we didn’t serve, we wouldn’t have a state,” said Ben Horim. “The idea that a group of Israelis would be exempt — that they would fight to be exempt from serving — would never have occurred to us in those days. But that is because in those days we didn’t know the ultra-Orthodox.”
Tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews are exempt from the two- to three-year compulsory military service most Israelis serve from age 18. For secular Israelis, the exemptions are one of many perks that the ultra-Orthodox receive from the state.
“They get government funds and all sorts of benefits just for being religious,” said Shiri Manuel, one of the organizers of Saturday’s protest. “They get money for studying and praying and for having lots of babies. It’s a drain on the state economy that the rest of us have to make up.”
Ultra-Orthodox leaders argue that they are serving the state by serving God. Ultra-Orthodox spend their youth in seminaries studying religious texts.
Government policy allows many of them to continue studying their entire lives, by exempting them from many taxes and giving them housing and food subsidies.
