There’s a strange heaviness in the air lately, harder to ignore with every headline. Maybe it’s because the uniforms are everywhere again — kids still with acne carrying rifles, reservists blinking through exhaustion, families quietly packing duffel bags they’ve already packed too many times this year. And then, right there in the middle of that reality, the government pushes forward a bill that essentially says: some people are born to carry this burden — and others are born exempt from it. It’s surreal. It’s insulting. And it feels like betrayal disguised as legislation.
For soldiers and those finishing their mandatory service, the message lands sharply. They gave years — not symbolic effort, but actual blood, fear, sleepless months, funerals, limping friends, and memories they’ll never quite shake off. And now the state is proposing a law that would formalize what was already a painful imbalance: entire sectors able to stay outside the system while others keep paying with years of their lives. The bill doesn’t fix injustice — it protects it, embalms it, gives it legality and a title.
אז למה חוק ההשתמטות של ש"ס והליכוד הוא החוק הכי אנטי-ציוני בתולדות המדינה?
הנה העובדות. אלה שש הנקודות העיקריות בחוק, שבאופן מעשי גוזר על המילואימניקים המשך של 100-120 ימי מילואים כל שנה.
1. חנינה המונית ומיידית לכל העריקים והמשתמטים הקיימים.
2. משתמט שיגיע לגיל 26 יקבל… pic.twitter.com/Xbd73XSVrn
— Naftali Bennett נפתלי בנט (@naftalibennett) November 28, 2025
Reservists feel it even more intensely. Since October 7, they’ve been carrying the war on their backs — leaving jobs, children, mortgages, studies, businesses. Not for a weekend here or a symbolic drill there, but months at a time. Some lost their income. Some lost their marriages. Some lost their mental footing entirely. And watching lawmakers negotiate exemptions while people who already served are being asked to serve again feels grotesque. It’s as if the same machine that drafts them without hesitation suddenly becomes delicate, fragile, full of religious sensitivities when confronting those who have never served and never intend to.
Families are absorbing emotional shrapnel too. A parent who sent three children to combat watches protests in Jerusalem — hundreds of thousands rallying against the idea of equal responsibility — and it stings in a way news print can’t capture. This isn’t theoretical. It’s the state saying: your children are expendable — someone else’s are protected. And when funerals don’t stop, when wounded soldiers sit in rehab staring at screens showing political negotiations over permanent exemptions, something deep cracks inside the Israeli psyche.
Taxpayers, the unglamorous backbone that keeps the system running, are already doing the math no one wants to say out loud. A rapidly growing population that mostly doesn’t serve and largely doesn’t join the workforce until late — if at all — now expects full financial support and a complete shield from civic obligations. And yes, people are tired — tired of paying twice: once through taxes and again through military service. It’s not sustainable. Economists have been shouting that for a decade, and the silence from policymakers isn’t ignorance — it’s political dependency.
That’s what makes this bill feel not just flawed, but fundamentally wrong. It’s not a plan for national unity. It’s a structure built to preserve inequality and guarantee it survives another generation. At exactly the moment when the country needs shared purpose, shared sacrifice, shared identity, lawmakers are cementing a system built on separation, exceptionalism, and legally sanctioned avoidance of responsibility.
Some will say: “This is the only compromise possible.” But compromise only works when everyone gives something. Here, only one side ever gives — bodies, time, dreams, years — while the other receives: stipends, protection, exemption, political leverage. That isn’t compromise. That’s hierarchy.
And the worst part? Israelis aren’t stupid. They know once a law like this is written, it becomes reality. It becomes identity. It becomes normal.
Maybe that’s why the anger feels sharper this time. Because people sense that if this passes, something foundational quietly dies — the belief that despite disagreements and chaos and politics and shouting, Israelis still share one basic, sacred truth:
We defend this country together. No exceptions.
If the government abandons that idea, the public won’t just be angry — they’ll lose trust. And once trust collapses between soldiers and state, between sacrifice and society, there’s no law in the world that can put that back together again.