Behind the Yair Golan Storm, One Truth Emerged About the Draft Law
The small storm surrounding Yair Golan’s remarks arose from the most predictable political place: the leader of The Democrats was heard saying that he would not rule out sitting with a Haredi party in a future government, if that were the way to replace the rule of Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben Gvir. Then came the clarification, then the attacks, and immediately Israeli debate was once again pulled into the familiar and sterile place: who “surrenders” to the ultra-Orthodox, who “sells out” those who serve, and who uses the draft law as a tool to bring down a government. But amid all that noise, Golan said one thing that was very precise, almost unusual in its political honesty: “All the draft laws being discussed are tainted by populism.” And he added the sentence that should have been the starting point for any serious discussion in Israel, “Thousands of ultra-Orthodox will not enlist tomorrow morning. This is a process.”
That is the truth the State of Israel refuses to say out loud to itself. There is no magic solution for enlisting the ultra-Orthodox. There is no single law, no single speech, no single protest or campaign that will cause thousands of yeshiva students to report to the induction center tomorrow morning. Whoever promises that is selling the public an illusion. Whoever pretends this is simply a matter of “wanting it hard enough” is ignoring the social, educational, family and identity structure of ultra-Orthodox society. One can oppose the Bismuth bill. One can say it is too weak, too soft, too political, full of loopholes or does not meet the needs of the IDF. Those are serious criticisms. But anyone presenting the public with a simple alternative of “coercion now and enlistment tomorrow” is not offering a solution, only a slogan. In the end, even opponents of the law know that the real question is not only how many draft orders will be sent, but how many young ultra-Orthodox men can actually go through a process of change without being torn from their family, their community and their world.
The Israeli debate on enlistment has long since become a fixed arena of collision. One side speaks about equality in service, but does not always really care about the question of how to get a young ultra-Orthodox man to go through such a change without ripping him away from his world, family and community. On the other side, the ultra-Orthodox public is fighting to preserve the world of Torah study, but it also knows that Israel’s security and social reality cannot continue forever around the same dead end. That is exactly where a more responsible discussion is needed, one that is less inflammatory and more connected to reality.
That is precisely why Golan’s words matter. Not because he suddenly became a spokesman for the ultra-Orthodox, and not because his political position is free of contradictions. On the contrary, the gap between his sharp declarations against the ultra-Orthodox parties and the practical understanding he expressed in the recording is exactly the story. Behind the microphones everyone speaks in slogans. In closed rooms, when they are required to think about how to actually form a government and how to actually change reality, they return to the same place: process, gradualism, indirect pressure, careful integration. This is not weakness. This is serious policy.
A state does not create deep social change through declarations of war on an entire public. It builds it through tailored service tracks, training, trust, incentives, boundaries, and an understanding that ultra-Orthodox society is not a single block, but a complex public, with large gaps between yeshivas, communities, families and young people. Anyone who knows the field even a little knows there is internal movement there, slow, sensitive and sometimes painful. If the state approaches it with a hammer, it will get a wall.
The problem is that the political system benefits more from the wall than from the solution. The draft law is a perfect tool for campaigns, it provides anger, blame, identity, camps, the High Court, rabbis, reservists, ultra-Orthodox, secular Israelis and a government on the verge of collapse. But the more the issue becomes a political weapon, the further it moves from a real solution. The result is that everyone shouts in the name of “the solution,” but in practice preserves the crisis.
And at that point, Golan puts his finger on a raw nerve. If all the opponents of the Bismuth bill offer is a dream of immediate mass enlistment, they too are tainted by populism. If all the coalition offers is a law meant to survive one more vote and keep the government in place, it too is not addressing the problem. Israel needs something else, a long-term, measurable plan, tough where necessary, smart where it must not break, and above all one that treats the young ultra-Orthodox man not as a political placard, but as a person.
The dispute over the enlistment of the ultra-Orthodox will not be resolved by a headline or by a recording. But sometimes, in the middle of a small political storm, a great truth can be heard. The ultra-Orthodox will not enlist tomorrow morning by the thousands. That does not mean giving up. It means we need to stop lying.
