Levinson: Arresting Haredi Draft Evaders Is Neither Just Nor Moral

Journalist and left-wing commentator Haim Levinson surprised many in the center-left camp Thursday by criticizing the arrest of Haredi draft evaders, arguing that the state cannot suddenly criminalize individuals after spending decades building and funding the system that produced them.

In a post he described as an “unpopular opinion,” Levinson wrote that the arrests of Haredim who do not report to enlistment offices are wrong both practically and morally.

“The arrests of Haredi draft evaders are not correct and are not morally just,” Levinson wrote.

According to Levinson, the state has encouraged Haredi non-enlistment for decades, including through public funding of educational institutions that teach children not to serve in the IDF.

“The state, for decades, encouraged the Haredi public with money not to enlist,” he wrote. “It is funding, at this very moment, thousands of educational institutions that educate their children not to enlist.”

Levinson argued that the problem is not the individual 18-year-old Haredi student, but the political and educational system the state allowed to develop.

“The state, for years, and at this very moment, gives the Haredim full cultural and educational autonomy to do whatever they want,” he wrote.

He said the state helped create what he called a political and educational “monster” of Haredi parties with their own school systems, protected by political power.

Because of that, Levinson said, it is unfair to turn suddenly to a young Haredi man raised inside that system and send him to prison.

“You cannot come to an individual Haredi who grew up in this system and tell him: the camp is over, that’s it, sit in prison,” he wrote.

Instead of pursuing arrests, Levinson said the state should focus its pressure on the institutions and political structures that preserve the current situation.

“We need to dismantle the institutions, not go after the individuals,” he wrote.

Levinson proposed cutting off state funding to independent Haredi school systems that do not educate toward military service and civic integration.

“Close Shas’s network and transfer the children to state education that educates toward military service,” he wrote. “Whoever does not want to send his child, fine. But without a shekel from the state. One hundred percent private.”

His comments come amid rising tension over the Haredi draft crisis, as police have begun transferring some draft evaders to military authorities. While Levinson supports ending the current exemption system, he argues that the moral responsibility lies first with the state-backed institutions, not with young men shaped by them.