"We Shall Islamize, And Not Enlist!"

An amazing way for charedim to avoid being draft-dodgers

You can’t make this stuff up. Well, you can, and actually I myself did make it up, two years ago, as an April Fool’s Day prank. And some people condemned me as being “vile,” stating that no such thing could ever happen. And now, lo and behold, it’s being professedly seriously proposed.

Yaakov Grodko is one of the hosts at Kol Berama, a popular charedi radio station based in Bnei Brak. He discusses how charedim can avoid the pesky Zionists punishing them for refusing to enlist in the IDF. He raises a point that I have heard many charedim state - that it is unfair how they are expected to enlist, when Muslim Arabs are not. And he says that in the charedi community, there are those proposing a novel solution: they can become Muslim!

Of course, this doesn’t mean that they should actually become Muslim. Rather, as he explains, the idea is that they should appear to convert to Islam, but only as a ruse. This is just as many Jews over history outwardly converted to Islam while secretly maintaining their religion.

They’ll recite the Shahadah, “I bear witness that there is no deity worthy of worship except Allah, and I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.” They’ll receive an official certificate from the Sharia court confirming the change of faith. And they’ll update their official status in the Israel Population Registry. And that would solve their problems, since Israel is not interested in drafting anti-Israel Muslim Arabs to the IDF.

Personally, I think that this is a terrific idea! But I don’t think that it would play out the way that these charedim think.

It’s true, Muslim Israeli Arabs do not get forcibly drafted to the IDF, and do not get punished for not enlisting. But do you know what else they don’t get?

Money.

Arabs receive a whole lot less money from the State than do Jews, in all kinds of ways. Arab schools tend to receive less funding per student than their Jewish counterparts, and that’s even when they are teaching the core curriculum (which charedim don’t want to do). Arab municipalities receive disproportionately smaller budgets for development, infrastructure, and local services (along with strict urban planning constraints).

And that’s just comparing Arabs to average Israelis. The gap is even bigger when you consider the vast additional sums that charedim receive, in terms of yeshiva funding, daycare subsidies, disproportionately large shares of the housing lotteries, etc.

And, of course, there are many political parties - including all the coalition partners of the charedim today - who insist that they will never sit with Muslims (which is why they receive less money).

Then there’s the foreign funding. Is Keren Olam HaTorah going to raise millions from American yeshivish donors by parading Gedolim wearing keffiyehs raising money for Muslims? I don’t think so!

So go ahead! Convert to Islam for all superficial intents and purposes. If charedim are that determined not to help their brethren during a war, and are willing to forgo all the endless billions of shekels that they currently drain from everyone else, I think that most Israelis would let them off the hook for army service. Inshallah!