I have met Aliyah and Integration Minister Ofir Sofer numerous times over the past two years of war. A disabled IDF veteran who was badly wounded as an officer in the Haruv Battalion and who has spoken about post-traumatic stress, he often looked pale, somewhat far away, with the quiet expression of someone who has seen too much.
As the war dragged on, another layer of worry was written on his face. Several of his children were serving in Gaza. This Religious Zionist Party (RZP) member was not calm for a single second.
For me, Sofer has always represented the true meaning of religious Zionism. Not the shouting in TV studios but the people who send their children to combat units, who mix Torah, work, and reserve duty, and who still believe in a state that belongs to everyone.
This week, that quiet, pale minister did something very loud.
On Monday, Sofer stood before microphones and said what many Israelis have been screaming at their TV screens for months. Regarding the new haredi (ultra-Orthodox) draft bill, he said: “This is a disgraceful law, devoid of any public courage.” He announced that he would vote against it, even if that means Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fires him from the government.
That sentence shook a coalition known for its strict discipline. Sofer is not an opposition MK on a TV panel. He is a minister from the RZP, a central pillar of Netanyahu’s government. Yet when it came to this draft bill, he drew his red line.
Haredi conscription bill offers amnesty, lacks enforcement
The proposal in front of the Knesset is marketed as a solution to the decades-long crisis over haredi conscription. In practice, it does almost the opposite. It softens or removes personal sanctions on draft dodgers and offers broad amnesty to ultra-Orthodox men who have ignored call-up orders.
Quotas are written on paper, but enforcement is weak. The bill makes it easier for the government to say, “We passed a law,” while making it much harder for the IDF to actually get the soldiers it needs.
Sofer used a very Israeli word for this. Isra-bluff – the idea that if you just write enough legal paragraphs, everyone will pretend something changed, while in reality, nothing changes on the ground. Coming from a politician, “Isra-bluff” is already a strong phrase. Coming from a man who has a combat citation, post-traumatic symptoms, and children in uniform, it sounds different. It sounds like the king is naked.
In his remarks, Sofer reminded Israelis what life has actually looked like since the October 7 massacre. Reserve troops may be needed for dozens of days per year in the coming years, on top of the hundreds of days that some have already served since the war began. This is the reality of thousands of families whose lives have been turned upside down.
Parents have barely seen their kids. Business owners struggle to keep companies alive, while they sit in tanks along the Lebanese border. Marriages are under pressure. Children no longer remember what it feels like to have a normal weekend with “Abba” (Dad) at home. Sofer meets these people in his work with lone soldiers, new immigrants, and traumatized veterans. He is one of the few politicians in this coalition who has spent years talking about PTSD as a lived experience.
When he says the law is a betrayal of those who fought and sacrificed, he is referring to very specific people. They are not theoretical.
Sofer was elected to the Knesset with the RZP in 2022. Inside the party, he has quietly been the serious officer, the practical figure who deals with aliyah, integration, veterans, and the periphery.
During the judicial reform saga, he was clearly uncomfortable with the way the overhaul was rushed through without broad consensus. Even though he supported the idea of some reform, he still faced criticism. Yet he did not attack his party leader in public or threaten to resign. He assumed the role of a devoted supporter. It is telling that this is the issue that finally pushed him to say no.
The issue of who bears the responsibility of defending the country has become a sensitive topic in Israeli society. It is not just about haredim. It is about fairness, about whether parents can keep sending their kids on one combat tour after another while other sectors treat army service as someone else’s problem.
Sofer is holding up a mirror to his own camp and saying that if religious Zionism really believes in a Jewish democratic state, in a shared destiny, then it cannot accept a law that makes a joke out of equality.
There is something else that makes Sofer’s stand different from other critics of the government. He is not calling for the coalition to be toppled. He is not joining protests or demanding elections tomorrow morning.
He talks about an honest debate inside his party and says he will try to convince his colleagues to oppose what he calls a disgrace. He is making a narrow, specific choice on one law, at a time of war, because he believes it endangers the social contract that keeps Israel functioning.
You can disagree with him on other issues. You can point to hardline positions he has taken in the past on territories, religion and state, and the Law of Return. He is not a left-winger in disguise. He is a classic religious-Zionist hawk and a patriotic Israeli who understands that no country can fight a multifront war indefinitely if half of its young men are exempt from serving and the other half are on their third or fourth call-up.
I have always had a soft spot for Ofir Sofer. With him, political concern has never felt like performance. It has looked more like exhaustion.
He is a true Zionist from a small community in the Galilee who almost lost his life for the IDF and went back to serve after two years of rehabilitation.
Now, by threatening his ministerial seat, he is doing something that in Israel in 2025 has become almost radical. He is matching his words to his biography.
In a coalition full of people who speak about Torah, people, and land, he is the one saying out loud that you cannot build any of those on the backs of a shrinking group of reservists who are being asked to sacrifice their bodies, marriages, and livelihoods while others receive legal cover to stay in the beit midrash (study hall).
In this moment, he is championing the pain of the mainstream Israeli who volunteered, who did the reserve days, who wakes up at night from sirens and memories, and who watches this bill and realizes that the political system has learned nothing from the last two years.
If the government chooses to pass a draft law that even its wounded-officer minister calls a disgrace, the problem will not be Ofir Sofer’s career. The problem will be the future of the IDF and of the fragile sense of togetherness that has kept Israelis going since October 7.
And yes, I am proud that this mensch is sitting in our government today.