Culture war looms as Israel pledges to end ultra-Orthodox military exemptions

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/culture-war-looms-as-israel-pledges-to-end-ultra-orthodox-army-exemptions/2012/05/11/gIQAi10YIU_story.html


(Abir Sultan/AP) - An Israeli soldier from an ultra-Orthodox Jewish unit in the Israeli army holds a gun during a training session in 2005. Military exemptions for ultra-Orthodox religious students have fueled resentment among Israel’s secular majority.

JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dramatically bolstered his ruling coalition this week with a unity deal meant to help him thwart challenges from fringe factions. But Yoel Krois, a man with sidelocks past his shoulders and a record of confronting authorities, says he remains ready for a fight.

From his cramped Jerusalem office, Krois pens broadsides that paper his ultra-Orthodox neighborhood and serve as religious proclamations on issues of the day. One of the newest tells readers to resist a brewing plot to draft ultra-Orthodox Jews into the Israeli military.


“We will go to prison instead,” said Krois, 39, sitting beneath a photograph of himself defying police as he and fellow activists with an anti-Zionist organization known as Edah Haredit protested the opening of a parking lot on the Jewish Sabbath. “We are protected by God.”

When Netanyahu and the leader of the centrist opposition party Kadima joined forces, they said their first priority would be a law ending widespread military exemptions for full-time religious students. Long-neglected, the issue has spiraled into a public policy nightmare: Not fixing it would perpetuate a system that the Israeli Supreme Court has ruled is unconstitutional. Fixing it could spark a culture war, as Netanyahu suggested when he vowed Thursday to make reforms “without setting public against public.”