Haredi leaders plan large protests outside IDF prison in support of detained draft dodgers

Hundreds of rabbis set to attend rallies at Beit Lid on Thursday evening; Slonim Hasidic group urges 'struggle against the enlistment decree and the persecution of Torah students'

By Sam Sokol
  • Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
 13 August 2025, 7:13 pmUpdated at 7:38 pm
Ultra-Orthodox Jews protest outside army recruitment offices in Jerusalem on August 13, 2025. The pictures in the posters, mimicking those of Hamas-held hostages, are of arrested draft-dodgers with text urging their release. (Chaim Goldberg/ Flash90)

Haredi leaders announced plans for two separate demonstrations outside the Beit Lid military prison in central Israel on Thursday evening to protest the arrest and detention of several ultra-Orthodox men who evaded conscription to the Israel Defense Forces, a week after the community declared “war” against the military’s efforts to increase enforcement against draft dodgers.

The first protest, set to take place at 9 p.m. Thursday, was called by Rabbi Dov Lando, the spiritual leader of the United Torah Judaism (UTJ) party’s Degel HaTorah faction, and is expected to be attended by hundreds of yeshiva deans and prominent rabbis.

It was announced on the front page of Degel HaTorah mouthpiece Yated Neeman as well as in the Hamodia newspaper, affiliated with UTJ’s Hasidic Agudat Yisrael faction.

The second was called for 10 p.m. by the Slonim Hasidic movement, which urged its members to “participate in the struggle against the draft decree and the persecution of Torah students.” Free transportation would be provided to allow Hasidim from around the country to attend, it announced.

Meanwhile on Wednesday evening, a number of ultra-Orthodox extremists set up a protest outside the IDF’s draft center in Jerusalem that mimicked the displays set up for the hostages in Gaza.

The demonstrators stood with yellow chairs with pictures of Haredi youths who have been jailed for draft evasion. Chairs with photos of the hostages taken to Gaza have been a mainstay of hundreds of demonstrations for their release.

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men block a road during a protest against the jailing of yeshiva students who failed to comply with an army recruitment order in Jerusalem on August 7, 2025. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Lando, who has repeatedly told yeshiva students to ignore draft orders, visited two detainees at Beit Lid last week, telling them the “entire Haredi community” stood behind them and urging them to “be strong and hold firm,” according to his spokesman.

The IDF has since said the visit was made without proper authorization.

Following Lando’s visit, Rabbi Moshe Hillel Hirsch, head of the Slabodka Yeshiva, arrived at the prison alongside members of Shas’s Council of Torah Sages. They were initially denied entry but were later allowed inside “to avoid unnecessary confrontations,” according to the military.


In a statement to The Times of Israel on Monday, the IDF said that it was reviewing procedures at Beit Lid following the rabbis’ visits and that it would ensure prison visitation rules were “enforced equally and in full” to prevent similar incidents.

Last year, dozens of far-right demonstrators broke into the base, where soldiers detained on suspicion of abusing a Palestinian terror suspect were being held for questioning.

‘We will die and not enlist’

For the past year, both of the Knesset’s Haredi parties, Shas and UTJ, have been pushing for the passage of a bill to enable most ultra-Orthodox males to continue avoiding military conscription or any form of national service, after the High Court ruled that the decades-long blanket exemptions from army duty traditionally afforded to the Haredi community were illegal.

Both parties recently quit the government over its failure to advance such legislation. UTJ also left the ruling Knesset coalition.

Police guard a military court at the Beit Lid base in central Israel, during a protest against the detention of Israeli reserve soldiers suspected of abusing a Palestinian detainee, July 30, 2024. (Chaim Goldberg/ Flash90)

Some 80,000 ultra-Orthodox men aged between 18 and 24 are currently believed to be eligible for military service, but have not enlisted. The IDF has said it urgently needs 12,000 recruits, due to the strain on standing and reserve forces amid the ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza and other military challenges.

The IDF has significantly stepped up its efforts to recruit the eligible Haredi men, sending out 54,000 conscription orders in July alone, although the Attorney General’s Office told the High Court of Justice last week that the government’s efforts were insufficient.

While only a handful of Haredi men have been arrested, their detentions have set off a flurry of protests by groups ranging from the hardline Jerusalem Faction to the Boyan Hasidic group.

Last week, ultra-Orthodox demonstrators blocked traffic near Tel Aviv and in Jerusalem for about four hours in response to senior rabbis’ call to join the struggle against conscription.

In addition to domestic protests, Haredi leaders are considering holding demonstrations outside of Israeli embassies worldwide in order to protest the arrest of Haredi draft evaders in Israel by the military police, a source with knowledge of the senior rabbis’ thinking told The Times of Israel on Saturday.

The source dismissed, however, a Channel 12 report from Friday claiming that Rabbi Lando was promoting an economic boycott of Israel.

Charlie Summers and Stav Levaton contributed to this report.

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