Following draft evader arrests, Gafni calls on Haredim to halt cooperation with police

The leaders of the Knesset’s Haredi factions slammed the police for arresting ultra-Orthodox draft evaders on Wednesday, with Degel HaTorah chairman Moshe Gafni instructing local party representatives on regional councils across the country to halt all cooperation with law enforcement and Agudat Yisrael leader Yitzhak Goldknopf calling on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to rein in the police.

“Following the change in policy by the Israel Police, and so that we do not, God forbid, become complicit in harming the holy Torah and those who study it, I request that you immediately halt all cooperation with the Israel Police, including the municipal policing units, until further notice,” Gafni wrote.

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid condemned Gafni’s call for “anarchy,” stating it was “further proof of why cooperation with the ultra-Orthodox parties is forbidden.”

“Their attempts to undermine the very existence of the State of Israel are disgraceful. They should sit in the opposition,” Lapid said in a statement.

According to the hardline Jerusalem Faction, three yeshiva students were arrested for draft evasion overnight before the group’s Tzeva Shachor anti-conscription hotline could send out a warning and mobilize “community activists” in order “to prevent the handover.”

Following the arrests, the ultra-Orthodox group reported that activists had arrived to protest outside the home of the security chief of the IDF’s Neve Tzedek Military Prison near Beit Lid, prompting the use of tasers and tear gas. A video shared by the group showed yeshiva students using a hat to fan the face of a young man lying down on the sidewalk. The Times of Israel was unable to verify the video. There was no comment from police.

In an email, the Jerusalem Faction said that protesters believed that “if military police officers and enforcement officials experience firsthand a fraction of what they do to the families and the Torah scholars, perhaps they will repent” and that such protests would continue “as long as the arrests of yeshiva students persist.”

Last month, 25 Haredim were arrested after demonstrators affiliated with the Jerusalem Faction breached the home of the head of the IDF’s Military Police in order to protest the detention of yeshiva students who have evaded military conscription.

Tuesday evening’s arrests came a week after the Israel Police, responding to harsh criticism from both the military and the High Court of Justice, announced that Commissioner Danny Levy had issued new orders to officers to detain draft dodgers and wait for the Military Police to pick them up.

IDF officials claimed in a meeting with Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara in January that police have been systematically preventing the army from arresting draft evaders in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods.

Last month, the High Court of Justice ordered the state to take “actual criminal proceedings” against Haredi draft dodgers, calling the police’s failure to arrest such people “unacceptable” and describing the situation as a “knowing and ongoing mass violation of the law.”

Over the past two years, the military has sent out tens of thousands of enlistment orders to members of the ultra-Orthodox community whose exemptions from mandatory service in the Israel Defense Forces were revoked under a 2024 High Court ruling. Most have ignored the orders, leading to large numbers of young men being classified as evaders and being subject to arrest or other sanctions.

While the military has made no move to arrest all 80,000 ultra-Orthodox men aged 18-24 believed to be eligible for service, the detainment of even a small fraction has ignited anger and occasionally violence in the country’s various Haredi enclaves.

According to Brig. Gen. Shay Tayeb, head of the IDF Personnel Directorate’s Planning and Personnel Management Division, there are currently around 32,000 people classified as draft evaders, while another 50,000 others have received a formal warning ahead of their formal declaration by the government as draft evaders.

‘A dangerous escalation’

Following Tuesday evening’s arrests, United Torah Judaism chairman Yitzhak Goldknopf, who heads the party’s Hasidic Agudat Yisrael faction, demanded that Prime Minister Netanyahu directly intervene to prevent the Military Police from engaging in enforcement against draft evaders, calling such activity “a dangerous escalation in the relentless persecution of Torah students, which unfortunately recalls dark periods in the history of the Jewish people.”

“Precisely during such a sensitive and tense period, the police force entrusted with public order is expected to act with responsibility and discretion, and to avoid populist measures that create unnecessary confrontations,” Goldknopf stated, arguing that police should focus their attention on other matters and calling on Netanyahu “to intervene immediately and order an immediate halt to these arrests.”

The arrests were also condemned by the Sephardic Shas party.

“Over the past two years, the entire Jewish people saw with their own eyes the great miracles that the Holy One, Blessed be He, performed for us in the war. Precisely out of this period, the majority of the nation is growing stronger in faith, deeply appreciating the holy Torah and those who study it, and opposing the ugly persecution against them,” Shas chairman Aryeh Deri said in a statement.

Reversing the sanctions

While the attorney general and High Court have been pushing for harsher sanctions against draft evaders, members of Netanyahu’s coalition voted 44-37 on Wednesday in favor of a preliminary reading of a bill restoring daycare subsidies for the children of draft evaders.

The vote came after Gafni reportedly threatened to vote in favor of a state commission of inquiry into October 7 unless the legislation was approved.

Netanyahu’s government has steadfastly refused to establish a state commission of inquiry, the only available independent public forum with investigative powers, into the October 7 disaster.

The legislation stipulates that only the employment or educational status of a child’s mother will be taken into account when deciding on a child’s eligibility for subsidies — reversing a 2024 order by the Attorney General’s Office to cut the subsidy because it no longer had a legal basis in the wake of the High Court’s ruling that members of the ultra-Orthodox community must be inducted into the army.

Ultra-Orthodox lawmakers slammed Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and his Religious Zionism party for failing to support the bill, which was also opposed by some members of Netanyahu’s Likud party.

In a tweet, Likud MK Dan Illouz condemned the legislation as “an enlistment-bypassing law designed to perpetuate the exemption and allow political operatives to continue funding the non-participation of tens of thousands of young men in the burden of service.”

UTJ on Sunday announced it would push for the passage of another bill allowing military courts to reduce prisoners’ sentences should prison authorities fail to accommodate detainees’ religious lifestyle.