Tagged Tal Law

Kadima Party leader Shaul Mofaz speaks at a news conference in Petach Tikvah about Kadima's reasons for leaving the Israeli government coalition, July 17, 2012. (Flash90/JTA)

(JTA) – For the second time in just two months, the Israeli political universe was upended when Shaul Mofaz’s Kadima Party voted July 17 to quit Israel’s governing coalition. Kadima’s departure, the result of a breakdown in negotiations over reforming Israel’s military draft law to include haredi Orthodox Jews,… Read more »

A haredi Orthodox man watching Israeli soldiers as an army ceremony at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Feb. 22, 2012. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90/JTA)

(JTA) – Israel’s new unity government may not alter Jerusalem’s strategy for curbing Iran’s nuclear weapons program or do much to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. It could, however, dramatically change something at home about which a huge number of Israelis care deeply: haredi Orthodox exemptions from military service.… Read more »

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, and Kadima Party chairman Shaul Mofaz at a joint news conference in the Knesset announcing that Kadima has joined the coalition government. May 8, 2012. (Miriam Alster/Flash90/JTA)

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israelis went to sleep Monday night expecting early elections in September for the 19th Knesset. They woke up to the news that elections would take place as planned in October 2013. A behind-the-scenes deal clinched overnight between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition leader Shaul Mofaz created Israel’s… Read more »

Soldiers from the Israeli army's haredi Orthodox unit called the Netzah Yehuda Battalion praying. (Abir Sultan/Flash90/JTA)

JERUSALEM (JTA) — When Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, granted a few hundred haredi Orthodox Jews an exemption from army service, it’s likely he never dreamed that 63 years later, tens of thousands of haredi Israelis would claim the exemption — or that the issue would be among… Read more »