Israeli Knesset Proposes to Deprive Draft Dodgers of the Right to Vote

Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, has announced his intention to submit to the Knesset a bill linking the right to vote to military service.

The politician announced this on his social media.

The initiative came after a massive rally attended by about 200,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews protesting against conscription.

According to Liberman, the bill will apply to all Israeli citizens, regardless of religion.

“Our law applies to everyone – Muslims, Jews, Circassians, and Christians. For me, any draft dodger is a draft dodger,” the politician said in his video address.

He emphasized that citizens who evade service should be subject to sanctions, including deprivation of voting rights.

According to Lieberman, this is necessary to ensure “real conscription,” as the current system does not guarantee equality of duties between citizens.

In June, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that students of religious schools (yeshivas) are also required to do military service. This decision led to massive protests in Jerusalem (Al-Quds).

The demonstrators came out with posters reading “Better prison than the military” and demanded that the exemption of Orthodox Christians from the draft be enshrined in law.

Rabbis said that military service contradicts Jewish traditions, and Orthodox parties threatened to withdraw from Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition if the government did not fulfill their demands.

In August, it was announced that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) conducted a large-scale operation at Ben Gurion Airport aimed at detaining ultra-Orthodox men who evaded military service.

Depending on the duration of the evasion, different punishments were introduced: those who evaded for up to 540 days were to be drafted, and those who evaded for longer were to be imprisoned.

The operation also covered people returning to Israel from abroad, including those who had been outside the country to avoid service, as well as those who had come for vacation or family reunions.

In 2024, the IDF managed to recruit about 3,000 ultra-Orthodox men, and on July 6, 2025, the Israeli military launched its largest recruitment campaign, which included up to 54,000 haredim.

Militarnyi previously reported that in January 2025, Israel began forming the first separate brigade of Orthodox men.