‘A sword over the study hall’: Ultra-Orthodox media rages at court ruling on draft
Vowing defiance of requirement for IDF service by Haredim, newspapers say ‘war’ declared on community, and people who ‘hate religion’ are trying to wipe out Orthodoxy from Israel
The front pages of newspapers serving the ultra-Orthodox community raged Wednesday morning against a landmark High Court ruling the day before that ordered the state to begin drafting thousands of community members into the army immediately.
Leading papers carried quotes that “war was being declared on the ultra-Orthodox community” and its way of life, which sees the study of Torah as a paramount activity.
Yeted Neeman, a mouthpiece for the ultra-Orthodox Degel Hatorah party, carried the headline, “A sword hanging over the study hall.”
The paper reported a quote from Rabbi Dov Landau, a leading figure in the community: “Dear brothers, save us!”
Landau went on to say that Israeli authorities and the court system “hate those who study Torah” and had acted with “anger, wickedness, and malice.”
Hamodia, considered an organ of the Agudath Israel party, declared that the High Court is “shattering the status quo and declaring war on the Torah world.”
It carried a quote from Rabbi Yisroel Hager, leader of the Vizhnitz Hassidic sect, that “Haters of religion are trying to wipe out Torah from Israel.”
The outlet’s English-language web page led with a story about a delegation of senior rabbis who have gone to the United States on a fundraising trip, hoping to pull in $100 million for yeshivas to counter the court’s ruling that the state must stop funding institutions that harbor draft-dodgers.
The story described the ongoing events as “a time of emergency crisis.”
Hamevaser arranged its front page like a funeral announcement. Under a headline reporting the court decision, the paper wrote that yeshiva students “will continue to study the holy Torah in any situation and at any price.”
Its lead story about the court ruling opened with “A cry went up among Haredi Judaism in the country and around the world.”
In its landmark ruling on Tuesday, the High Court of Justice ruled unanimously that the government must draft ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students into the military since there is no longer any legal framework to continue the decades-long practice of granting them blanket exemptions from service.
The court ruling also permanently barred the state from funding ultra-Orthodox yeshivas for students who are studying in them in lieu of military service, asserting that those funds were bound up in the terms of the IDF service exemptions which now no longer exist.
The High Court’s decision means that after decades of political and societal controversy and strife over the issue, there is now a legal obligation for young Haredi men to join their Jewish Israeli comrades and serve in the military.
