Video snippet from a protest being held in Jerusalem in 2024 against the Draft (@i24News/X)
Video snippet from a protest being held in Jerusalem in 2024

Torah vs. Tanks: Haredi Uprising Puts Netanyahu on the Edge

Details
The Judean Staff
Politics
Netanyahu’s Coalition on the Brink: Haredi Exodus Threatens to Shatter Government Over Draft Law Crisis.

The walls of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fragile government are beginning to tremble as the ultra-Orthodox parties that once served as its most loyal pillars now teeter on the edge of a full-blown political mutiny. But it is not about the Judicial overhaul, or about a ceasefire deal that hands Hamas a victory in exchange for all the remaining hostages that is causing this turmoil in the coalition, in fact the issue is almost as old as the State of Israel itself.

Just 24 hours after United Torah Judaism (UTJ) — specifically its influential Lithuanian faction, Degel HaTorah — declared an abrupt and dramatic withdrawal from the ruling coalition, eyes now turn to Shas, the Sephardi-Haredi party whose spiritual council will convene Wednesday to decide whether to follow suit and plunge the government into chaos.

This comes amid mounting fury over what Haredi leaders are calling an unprecedented assault on the sanctity of Torah study — a clear reference to the controversial and long-delayed Draft Law, which seeks to end sweeping military exemptions for yeshiva students.

“Severe and Unacceptable Harm”: Shas Prepares for a Defining Vote

In a statement issued Tuesday, the Council of Torah Sages, the spiritual leadership of Shas, announced that its emergency meeting was being held in light of what it described as "severe and unacceptable harm to the status of Torah students." This reference to the Draft Law was anything but subtle — it was a battle cry.

If Shas joins UTJ in abandoning Netanyahu, the coalition would lose its parliamentary majority entirely — shrinking from a razor-thin 61 seats to a powerless minority — a political earthquake that could bring down the government altogether.

The Breaking Point: UTJ’s Walkout Stuns Jerusalem

UTJ's exit was not a symbolic gesture — it was a coordinated political walkout. Following failed negotiations on Monday over the final wording of a bill that would permanently exempt tens of thousands of Haredi men from military service, the party’s MKs — from both the Lithuanian Degel HaTorah and the Hasidic Agudat Yisrael factions — resigned from their prestigious posts en masse.

Among those stepping down were:

  • Uri Maklev, Deputy Transportation Minister

  • Moshe Gafni, Chairman of the Finance Committee

  • Yaakov Asher, Chairman of the Interior and Environmental Protection Committee

  • Yitzhak Pindrus, Chairman of the State Affairs Committee

On Tuesday, the Agudat Yisrael faction joined the rebellion:

  • Meir Porush, Minister for Jerusalem Affairs and Jewish Tradition

  • Yaakov Tessler, Deputy Minister of Culture and Sport

  • Yisrael Eichler, Chairman of the Welfare Committee
    All handed in resignations, following in the footsteps of party head Yitzhak Goldknopf, who had already vacated his post as Housing Minister in June.

Spiritual Leadership Speaks Out: “Crushing Torah is Crushing Creation”

This mass exodus was prompted by a powerful and emotionally charged letter from Degel HaTorah’s revered spiritual giants, Rabbi Dov Lando and Rabbi Moshe Hillel Hirsch, who on Sunday evening instructed the party’s MKs to immediately abandon the coalition.

“Since the governing authorities are showing intentions to increasingly restrict the lives of Torah learners… through attempts to demean and crush them… it is therefore my opinion that participation in the government and coalition should be immediately terminated… May God deliver us swiftly,” they wrote.

To the ultra-Orthodox community, the government’s attempts to enforce enlistment — even partially — represent nothing short of a spiritual assault on Judaism itself.

The Backlash: Majority of Israelis Say ‘Enough’

While Haredi leadership describes the government’s position as draconian and disrespectful, many religious, secular and the traditional Israelis that lie in between, see it differently.

The decades-old exemption that has allowed Haredim to avoid mandatory military service while collecting generous state subsidies has worn thin. With the ongoing war against Hamas, Hezbollah and the existential threat from Iran, Israelis across the political spectrum are asking: Why should my son fight and die, while theirs study uninterrupted? Some even bring up the logic behind the ultra-Orthodox communities' focus on Yeshivas and Torah learning as a profession.

For close to two millennia, only the best and brightest students would be afforded the ability to learn for a living - and this system created some of the most revered Rabbis in Judaism's history. However, today there is a culture that frowns upon those within the community who choose to work in a profession instead. Considering all the great Rabbis like Maimonides and Rashi had jobs, sometimes multiple jobs, the focus of the ultra orthodox seems misplaced.

A Coalition on the Edge

Netanyahu now faces a stark reality: his once-stable religious bloc is fracturing, and the Draft Law — once the political glue binding Likud to the ultra-Orthodox — is now threatening to be the wedge that tears the alliance apart.

If Shas walks, the prime minister’s parliamentary majority will vanish overnight. Though neither UTJ nor Shas has yet called for new elections, their departure from the government could leave Netanyahu paralyzed, his legislative agenda in shambles, and the Knesset on a collision course with dissolution.

The fate of the government now rests in the hands of Shas’s Council of Torah Sages, which will gather on Wednesday for what may be the most consequential decision in Israel’s ultra-Orthodox political history.

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