Extremist Haredi protesters chant ‘traitor’ at Shas lawmaker’s door

A group of Haredi extremists opposed to any conscription of ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students demonstrated Wednesday inside the apartment building where Shas MK Yinon Azoulay lives in the southern city of Ashdod.

Video taken by Azoulay’s neighbor and posted by Army Radio showed at least eight protesters, including young boys, yelling and banging on his door as she confronted them, telling them to leave. They could be seen ignoring the neighbor and continuing to chant “traitor” as she told them she had called the police.

Azoulay told the Ynet news outlet after the incident that he and his family were okay and “taking it humorously.”

“I hope that now people will be able to differentiate between those who behave like this and those who are sane; those who listen to their rabbis and those who don’t seem to have rabbis,” he said. “I don’t know any rabbis who would tell [their congregants] to do something like this. But it’s okay. We’re paid, in part, to be treated like this.”

The incident came as lawmakers from Shas and fellow ultra-Orthodox party United Torah Judaism have increasingly been targeted for cooperating in the advancement of a bill to regulate conscription for yeshiva students.

The new bill ostensibly proposes to draft ultra-Orthodox men who are not enrolled in yeshiva, but the opposition charges that it will still allow the vast majority to avoid military service and will only impose weak penalties on those who are required to enlist but resist.

בקריאות "בוגד": חרדים קיצוניים הפגינו בבניין המגורים של ח"כ ינון אזולאי מש"ס@shlomoraichman pic.twitter.com/26qnGuTinr

— גלצ (@GLZRadio) November 19, 2025

The incident outside Azoulay’s apartment follows two other attacks on Saturday night on Haredi MKs. Others have received threats.

In the first incident, extremists smashed a window of Shas MK Yoav Ben-Tzur’s vehicle as he left a weekly Torah lesson in Jerusalem. Later that night, dozens of Haredi demonstrators protested outside the home of United Torah Judaism MK Ya’akov Asher in Bnei Brak.

The protests were the latest instances in which hardline factions of Haredim demonstrated their rejection of any plan that would conscript yeshiva students, even though the proposed law would likely enshrine mass exemptions for the community.

Haredi men have long been exempted from Israel’s mandatory draft, a practice the High Court declared illegal last year.

The Israel Defense Forces has said that it faces an acute manpower shortage owing to Israel’s conflicts in Gaza and on other fronts, heightening the pressure to create a framework that would regulate Haredi conscription.

Haredi parties have pushed for continued draft exemptions, including by breaking with the government and boycotting coalition legislation. Late last month, some 200,000 ultra-Orthodox men blocked the entrance to Jerusalem for a mass protest against conscription.