Several hundred parents of soldiers sent an open letter on Tuesday, June 11, to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, urging fighters to “lay down their arms and return home immediately”. This appeal comes in addition to letters from military families – mostly reservists – and even fighters themselves, sent to Israeli authorities or local media to express their anger after the adoption in first reading by the Knesset (Parliament), on the night of Monday to Tuesday, of a text of law concerning a reform of the mechanisms of exemption from military service of young people from ultra-Orthodox circles.
This controversial text, dating back to 2022, aims to gradually and limitedly increase the conscription of “haredim” (those who “fear God”), even as Israeli society is increasingly critical of the very idea of exemption.
These tensions are not new, but the context of general mobilization linked to the war exacerbates them. And, if the questions raised by the missives circulating on social networks have nothing to do with the fate of the populations in Gaza, – where the war that Israel has been waging there since the deadly attack of October 7, 2023 by Hamas is entering its ninth month – they nevertheless claim to get in the way of the conduct of military operations. What exactly do they say? Things never written, in these terms, since October 7, in an environment which does not doubt the merits of the war, but criticizes the way in which its leaders, starting with the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, are leading it.
That emanating from “parents of fighters from different units” and addressed to the Ministry of Defense, is unambiguously titled: “Subject: notice of cessation of combat support. » Its content derives from “last night’s vote in the Knesset, which was adopted by a majority of 63 members, and after the untimely death of four courageous fighters”, – soldiers who died in Gaza the day before, bringing to 398 the number of soldiers killed in the ground offensive since October. The parents conclude with an injunction: “Our child fighters are being told that they must stop fighting. »
The previous week, other letters had circulated, also from parents of soldiers, who had brought before the Supreme Court the need for the army “recruits yeshiva students” (centers of Torah and Talmud studies), that is to say the ultraorthodox (13% of the population).
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