Comments by one of Israel’s most senior ultra-Orthodox rabbis suggesting Jews might have been better off without a state have sparked controversy nationwide.
In footage aired by Channel 12 on Monday, 96‑year‑old Rabbi Dov Lando, spiritual leader of the Degel HaTorah party, also said that soldiers who identify with Religious Zionism and died in Israel’s wars are paying the price for the teachings of their rabbis. The remarks, made at a private gathering in his Bnei Brak home, have ignited a political firestorm just three weeks before the October 27 parliamentary election.
“They are killed because their rabbis teach them a distorted Torah,” Lando said, adding that many military operations are pursued “not to save lives but for the honour of the state.”
Lando made these comments in response to a question about why some ultra‑Orthodox Jews, who traditionally avoid military service, admire religious Zionists who combine Torah study with army duty.
Although Lando’s views are not new — they first appeared in February 2025 — their resurgence this week coincides with an election campaign where ultra‑Orthodox conscription has become one of the most divisive issues in Israeli politics.
In 2024 the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that there is no legal basis for exempting ultra‑Orthodox yeshiva students from military service, and the government has so far failed to pass legislation restoring those exemptions. The dispute has triggered large protests on both sides.
“The real issue isn’t what he said, but why this debate has been thrust to the forefront of Israeli discourse just weeks before the election,” said Ehab Jabareen, an Israeli affairs researcher, speaking to Al Jazeera.
Better ‘without a state’
Lando’s party is one of the two factions within the United Torah Judaism (UTJ) alliance, which secured seven seats in the 2022 election and had been part of Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition before its ministers resigned last year.
The UTJ bloc has continued to offer intermittent support to the coalition, yet Netanyahu remains reluctant to abolish the military exemption — despite broad opposition across Israel — fearing that UTJ and similar parties would withdraw their backing entirely.
Besides leading Degel HaTorah, Lando is also a spiritual authority for Israel’s Lithuanian ultra‑Orthodox community, which constitutes about one‑third of the country’s estimated 1.45 million Haredim.
In May he declared that he no longer trusts Netanyahu and called for the dissolution of parliament.
In the same footage he went further, stating, “It is possible to live well with the Arabs without a state,” and suggested that international or Palestinian administration would have been “the best outcome.”
He argued that Zionism “provoked Arab hostility” and brought both material and spiritual calamity upon the Jewish people, describing secular Israelis as having built “a state of apostasy and heresy.”
While his remarks echo historic non‑Zionist and anti‑Zionist strains once prevalent among ultra‑Orthodox Jews, they also openly entertain the idea of living under a non‑Zionist regime — a notion that is especially contentious in Israel today.
Ibrahim Khatib, a conflict‑studies scholar at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, said Lando’s comments draw a line between Zionism and Judaism from within the Jewish community itself, even as the Israeli establishment strives to fuse the two.
They also challenge the narrative that Jewish communities in Arab lands were endangered and needed Zionist rescue at Israel’s founding in 1948, Khatib told Al Jazeera. He cautioned, however, that Israel’s ultra‑Orthodox sector is predominantly right‑wing, its leaders hold conservative views, and some have issued openly offensive statements about Arabs and Palestinians.
Political ammunition
Israeli opposition leaders swiftly seized on the newly surfaced footage of Lando, using it to criticize a figure within Netanyahu’s electoral alliance.
Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett — one of Netanyahu’s main rivals in the upcoming election — labeled the remarks “anti‑Semitic, anti‑Zionist and anti‑[Israeli military]”, but directed his criticism at Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, whom he accused of “backing Lando and channeling tens of billions of shekels to him and his associates.”
Gadi Eisenkot, another opposition leader whose Yashar party campaigns for enforcing the draft, urged every Zionist party to pledge never to sit alongside Lando’s party.
Netanyahu, who publicly rejected Lando’s comments in July after the rabbi accused the Religious Zionism movement of “incitement to murder” for supporting the conscription of religious seminary students, has yet to issue a statement.
Yair Golan, head of the Democrats, put it bluntly: “Netanyahu remains silent because without Rabbi Lando and his emissaries he cannot form a government.”
Jabareen interprets Netanyahu’s silence as a calculated move.
“If Netanyahu confronts Lando aggressively, he risks alienating the Haredim whose support he needs to build a coalition,” Jabareen said. “If he stays quiet, he gives his opponents ammunition to tell right‑wing voters that the self‑proclaimed champion of Zionism and security depends on a religious leadership that doubts Zionism itself.”
Who fights and who dies
Jabareen added that the ultra‑Orthodox draft debate has evolved “from an old quarrel over religion and state into a question about the Israeli social contract itself: Who fights? Who dies? And who receives the exemptions, budgets, and political influence in return?”
Mohammad Abu Rumman, an academic adviser at the Politics and Society Institute in Amman, said the importance of Lando’s remarks lies in the question that prompted them. He noted that the example of a young religious man who combines Torah study with military service raises an internal ultra‑Orthodox query: “Why don’t we do the same?”
“When Lando characterizes their teaching as a distorted Torah, he is attempting to shut the door on emulating them,” Abu Rumman told Al Jazeera. “His words are aimed at his own community as much as at his critics.”
But Jabareen contends that the rift exposed by the controversy is more perilous for Netanyahu than the usual secular‑religious divide, because it cuts across the right wing itself. Religious Zionists have paid a heavy human toll in the war, while the ultra‑Orthodox leadership continues to reject conscription. Caught between those who bear the cost of war and those who refuse to serve, Netanyahu needs both groups and cannot satisfy them simultaneously.
Whether the backlash over Lando’s remarks will translate into votes remains uncertain. Abu Rumman expects the comments to reinforce existing positions rather than sway undecided voters. He added that the potential impact could be felt among right‑wing voters who serve in the army and resent Netanyahu’s protection of ultra‑Orthodox demands.
“Even if Netanyahu relies on these parties to secure a majority, that dependence will not vanish because of a rabbi’s remarks, however shocking,” Abu Rumman said. He also noted that Netanyahu is not the UTJ’s sole suitor: Channel 12 reported that, frustrated by his failure to obtain a law exempting ultra‑Orthodox men from military service, the party would not rule out or oppose a government led by Eisenkot.
“The Israeli right has managed to shelter under one banner two currents with nearly opposite visions of the Jewish state,” Jabareen observed. “One venerates the state and the expansion of its sovereignty; in the other, one of its most prominent rabbis can declare that it might have been better had the state never been established.”
