Dozens try to break into home of rabbi promoting IDF service

Extremist Haredi protesters block highway for 3 hours to decry enlistment to IDF

Demonstrators sit on Route 4, near Bnei Brak, chanting, ‘We will die and not enlist’ and berating ultra-Orthodox cop: ‘You enlisted to the Zionists? Better join Hamas’

Ultra-Orthodox extremists block Route 4 during a protest against the drafting of Haredi men to the IDF, outside of Bnei Brak, August 1, 2024. (Erik Marmor/Flash90)
Ultra-Orthodox extremists block Route 4 during a protest against the drafting of Haredi men to the IDF, outside of Bnei Brak, August 1, 2024. (Erik Marmor/Flash90)

Haredi protesters from an extremist faction blocked a major traffic artery in central Israel for three hours on Thursday evening, protesting the recruitment of ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students to the Israel Defense Forces.

Dozens of men blocked rush hour traffic in both directions on Route 4, at an intersection near the city of Bnei Brak, east of Tel Aviv.

They chanted slogans such as: “We will die and not enlist” and “To prison and not to the army.”

Police declared the protest illegal, but some of the demonstrators — including boys — sat on the road in front of vehicles and resisted efforts to remove them from the highway.

Some participants berated Border Police officers who are themselves ultra-Orthodox. “You enlisted to the Zionists? It would be better if you enlisted to Hamas — there they don’t fight the Torah,” one said, according to Ynet.

Eventually, police cleared out the protesters and the road reopened to traffic.

The protest, one of many in recent months, came in response to the High Court of Justice’s landmark ruling in June that ordered the military to begin conscripting ultra-Orthodox men and halt funding to yeshivas that do not comply.

It was led by a radical anti-Zionist group that split several years ago from the slightly less extremist Jerusalem Faction.

Separately, hundreds tried Thursday evening to break into the Bnei Brak home of Rabbi David Leybel, who has been attacked by the Haredi establishment over his promotion of programs that support members of the ultra-Orthodox community entering the workforce and the military, and who is advising the IDF on forming a new Haredi-friendly brigade.

The rabbi’s associates told Hebrew media that protesters arrived outside the house, and at some point started to smash security cameras, vandalize cars and try to enter the house, chanting that the rabbi was “worthy of death.”

“We call on the rabbi’s students and anyone who opposes violence to come and defend the rabbi’s home,” Leybel’s associates told the media, urging police to arrive.

But the event appeared to end relatively calmly. Haredi politicians, including Interior Minister Moshe Arbel, condemned the “handful of extremists” and said they were “desecrating God’s name and are not part of us.”

The dispute over the ultra-Orthodox community serving in the military is one of the most contentious in Israel, with decades of governmental and judicial attempts to settle the issue never reaching a stable resolution. The Haredi religious and political leadership fiercely resists and protests any effort to draft mainstream yeshiva students who are involved in religious study.

Many ultra-Orthodox Jews believe that military service is incompatible with their way of life, and fear that those who enlist will be secularized. Many Israelis who do serve, however, say the decades-long arrangement of mass exemptions unfairly burdens them, a sentiment that has strengthened since the October 7 attack and the ensuing war, in which more than 680 soldiers have been killed and over 300,000 citizens called up to reserve duty.

Haredi activists who oppose any draft orders in the ultra-Orthodox community regularly stage raucous protests in Jerusalem, Bnei Brak and elsewhere, which snarl up traffic and are forcibly broken up by police.

Ultra-Orthodox extremists block Route 4 and clash with police during a protest against the drafting of Haredi men to the IDF, outside of Bnei Brak, August 1, 2024. (Erik Marmor/Flash90)

In June, the High Court ruled that there was no longer any legal framework allowing the state to refrain from drafting Haredi yeshiva students into military service, and the attorney general ordered the government to immediately begin the process of conscription for 3,000 such men — the number the military has said it can process at this preliminary stage.

Last month, the IDF announced that it would begin the process. The first thousand enlistment orders went out on July 21 and the military is preparing to send out its second batch.

On Wednesday, the Attorney General’s Office instructed the army to expand its mobilization to include full-time yeshiva students and not only those members of the Haredi community who do not study Torah, and who are part of the workforce.

The current government, which includes the Shas and United Torah Judaism ultra-Orthodox parties, has vowed to pass legislation that would slowly increase Haredi enlistment, but major gaps remain between the desires of the Haredi factions and of many senior Likud lawmakers.

The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee is currently working on an ultra-Orthodox enlistment bill that chairman Yuli Edelstein (Likud) has said will advance only if there is “broad agreement.” If passed, the legislation would set the age of exemption from mandatory service for Haredi yeshiva students at 21 — down from the current 26 — and “very slowly” increase the rate of ultra-Orthodox enlistment.

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