Anti-Zionist Remarks by Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi Rattle Israeli Politics

Remarks by one of Israel's most influential ultra-Orthodox rabbis — suggesting Jews might have fared better without a state — are rattling the country's political scene just three weeks before the October 27 parliamentary election.

According to footage broadcast by Channel 12 on Monday, Rabbi Dov Lando, 96, the spiritual leader of the Degel HaTorah party, also said that soldiers who follow "religious Zionism" and die in Israel's wars do so because of what their rabbis teach them. The comments were made at a closed meeting at his home in Bnei Brak.

"They are killed because their rabbis teach them a distorted Torah," Lando said, arguing that many military campaigns are waged "not to save lives, but for the honor of the state."

Lando's comments came in response to a question about the admiration some ultra-Orthodox men — who traditionally refuse to enlist — hold for religious Zionists, who combine Torah study with military service.

The remarks are not new — they were first published in February 2025. But their resurfacing this week lands in the middle of an election campaign, as ultra-Orthodox military service has become one of the sharpest fault lines in Israeli politics.

In 2024, Israel's Supreme Court ruled that there was no legal basis for ultra-Orthodox seminary students to be exempted from military service, and the government has since been unable to pass a law restoring the exemptions. The issue has triggered large protests on both sides.

"The question is not what he said, but why this statement was placed at the center of Israel's debate three weeks before the election," Ehab Jabareen, a researcher on Israeli affairs, told Al Jazeera.

Able to live well "without a state"

Lando's party is one of two factions in the United Torah Judaism (UTJ) alliance, which won seven seats in the last election in 2022 and was part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government before its ministers resigned last year.

The bloc has nevertheless continued to intermittently support the ruling coalition, and Netanyahu has been cautious about scrapping military exemptions — despite broad opposition in Israeli public opinion — for fear that UTJ and similar parties would withdraw their support entirely.

Beyond his role in Degel HaTorah, Lando is also one of the spiritual leaders of the Lithuanian ultra-Orthodox community, which makes up about a third of the estimated 1.45 million ultra-Orthodox Jews, also known as Haredim, in Israel.

In May, he declared he no longer trusted Netanyahu and called for the dissolution of parliament.

In the footage, he went further: "It is possible to live well with the Arabs without a state," he said, adding that international or Palestinian rule would be the "best situation."

By his argument, Zionism "makes the Arabs hate us" and brings physical and spiritual calamity upon Jews. He described secular Israelis as having built "a state of apostasy and heresy."

The comments reflect the anti-Zionist, non-Zionist views that once dominated ultra-Orthodox Judaism, but now carry an explicit implication about the possibility of living in a non-Zionist state — which is even more controversial in Israel.

Ibrahim Khatib, a conflict researcher at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, said Lando's remarks draw a line between Zionism and Judaism "from within the Jewish community itself," at a time when Israel's official establishment "tries to bind the two together."

Khatib told Al Jazeera that the statement also challenges the argument that Jewish communities in Arab societies were threatened and that the Zionist movement emerged to "save them" when the State of Israel was established in 1948. However, Khatib noted that Israel's ultra-Orthodox are "right-wing, their leaders hold right-wing views, and some of them have made clearly offensive statements about Arabs and Palestinians."

Political ammunition

Israeli opposition leaders quickly responded after footage of Lando surfaced this week, seizing on it as an opportunity to attack a figure belonging to a party in Netanyahu's electoral bloc.

Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett — one of Netanyahu's main rivals in the upcoming election — called the remarks "anti-Jewish, anti-Zionist and anti-Israeli military," but aimed his fire at Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, whom he said "back Lando and funnel tens of billions of shekels to him and his friends."

Gadi Eisenkot, another opposition leader whose Yashar party campaigns for military service enforcement, called on every Zionist party to commit to not sitting in a coalition with Lando's party.

Netanyahu, who publicly rejected Lando's remarks in July when the rabbi accused the Religious Zionist movement of "inciting murder" for supporting the conscription of seminary students into the army, has so far not commented.

Yair Golan, leader of the Democrats party, put it bluntly: "Netanyahu is silent because without Rabbi Lando and his envoys, he has no government."

Jabareen said Netanyahu's silence is "calculated."

"If Netanyahu attacks Lando forcefully, he pays a price with the Haredim he needs to form a government," he said. "If he stays silent, he hands his rivals material to tell right-wing voters that the man who talks about Zionism and security depends on a religious leadership that is skeptical of Zionism itself."

Who fights and who sacrifices

According to Jabareen, ultra-Orthodox conscription has turned "from a long-running dispute over religion and state into a question about Israel's very social contract: Who fights? Who sacrifices? And who is exempted, in exchange for budgets and political influence?"

Mohammad Abu Rumman, an academic adviser at the Politics and Society Institute in Amman, said the significance of Lando's remarks lies in the question that prompted them. According to him, the example of a religious young man combining Torah study with military service "raises a question within the ultra-Orthodox world itself: Why don't we do the same?"

"When Lando describes their teaching as a distorted Torah, he is trying to close the door on emulating them," Abu Rumman told Al Jazeera. "His words are aimed at his own audience as much as at his opponents."

However, Jabareen argued that the controversy exposes a split more dangerous for Netanyahu than the familiar conflict between secular and religious Israelis, because it runs through the right itself. Religious Zionists have paid in blood in wars, while the ultra-Orthodox leadership continues to refuse to enlist. Caught between those who pay the price for war and those who refuse, Netanyahu needs both and cannot satisfy both at once.

Whether the wave of outrage over Lando's remarks translates into votes remains unclear. Abu Rumman predicted the statement will "reinforce existing positions rather than change voters' choices." According to him, the space where it could have an impact lies among right-wing voters who have served in the military and are dissatisfied with Netanyahu's defense of ultra-Orthodox demands.

"If Netanyahu needs these parties to build a majority, that need will not disappear just because of a rabbi's statement, however shocking," Abu Rumman said. Netanyahu is also not UTJ's only suitor: Channel 12 reported that, frustrated by his failure to secure a law exempting the ultra-Orthodox from military service, the party would not rule out or oppose a government led by Eisenkot.

"Israel's right has managed to bring under one political roof two streams with almost opposing visions of the Jewish state," Jabareen said. "One side sanctifies the state and the expansion of sovereignty. On the other, one of the most important rabbis can say it would have been better if the state had never been established."