Haredi protesters clash with cops in Jerusalem, Bnei Brak as leaders vow war against draft

Thousands of Haredi men blocked traffic near Tel Aviv and in Jerusalem for about four hours on Thursday as they heeded their rabbis’ call to wage war against the Israel Defense Forces’ renewed effort to recruit ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students, two of whom were arrested Wednesday for draft evasion.

The protests, which are usually held by the hardline Jerusalem Faction after yeshiva students are arrested, drew the rare participation and support of rabbis from major Haredi factions.

Demonstrators clashed with police officers, calling them “Nazis.” Three protesters were arrested for tossing stones at police on Route 4, near the central Haredi city of Bnei Brak, and another two protesters were detained for the same reason on Jerusalem’s Bar Lev Road, where a Border Police officer was injured, the Walla news site reported.

The two roads later reopened for traffic late Thursday evening. Police on Bar Lev Road used a water cannon and skunk spray to disperse the protest there. An officer beat a protester who was taken away in an ambulance after being apparently knocked unconscious, as witnessed by a Times of Israel reporter.

Hundreds of demonstrators, chiefly young men and boys, had previously blocked Jerusalem’s central Bar Ilan Junction, where Border Police officers beat them with batons.

One officer punched a demonstrator, knocking his black hat to the ground. Around four mounted officers were also on the scene as police dispersed the protest.

Demonstration moves to Bar Lev boulevard and Border Police officers with batons beat protesters blocking road to traffic pic.twitter.com/81TBgtu1Bv

— charlie summers (@cbsu03) August 7, 2025

Protesters in both locations danced and sang “We will die and not enlist,” with some burning IDF draft orders.

Others hoisted signs with slogans against Zionism and the State of Israel. One sign at the Jerusalem protest read, “release the hostages,” with pictures of three detained yeshiva students; the slogan is more typically used in demonstrations demanding the release of the remaining Hamas-held hostages.

The protests followed calls for public defiance published in mouthpieces of each of the three major Haredi parties: the Sephardic party Shas, and the two factions that make up the Ashkenazi political party United Torah Judaism.

All three parties quit the government last month over its failure to codify the Haredi community’s exemption from military service. UTJ also joined the opposition, leaving the government leaning on a hair-breadth majority of 61 out of the Knesset’s 120 seats.

A source close to Rabbi Dov Lando, the spiritual leader of the Lithuanian, or non-Hasidic, UTJ faction, Degel HaTorah, said that no final decisions have been made regarding a strategy to escalate the struggle, and that “everything is open.”

Lando, who has repeatedly told yeshiva students to ignore draft orders, came to the Beit Lid military prison on Thursday to visit brothers Rafael and Baruch Yitzhakov, the yeshiva students who were detained for draft evasion on Wednesday.

A video disseminated by his office shows Lando, who is 94, entering the section of the building devoted to family visits, escorted by some of his assistants.

Lando told the detained brothers that the entire Haredi community stands behind them, according to a statement from his office.

הגר״ד לנדו בכלא הצבאי בית ליד https://t.co/qkR96R0YSn pic.twitter.com/LvYnb2VKsZ

— אבי מוסקוב Avi moskoff (@AviMoskov) August 7, 2025

“Be strong and hold firm,” Lando was quoted as saying. “The entire Haredi community stands behind you. With God’s help, you will be released soon and return to being Torah students, yeshiva students, just as you were until now. God will help you.”

Meanwhile, MK Meir Porush — a veteran lawmaker from UTJ faction Agudat Israel, an alliance of Hasidic sects — arrived at the Justice Ministry in Jerusalem in the afternoon to protest the arrest of the two brothers.

In a statement, Porush said he intends to move his office’s activities to a spot outside the ministry and forgo food for nine hours a day.

“I cannot sit comfortably in my office when the military is roaming around at night and arresting yeshiva students,” said Porush, whom a Times of Israel investigation earlier this year linked to a telephone hotline advising yeshiva students to ignore draft orders.

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara ordered the IDF in June last year to begin drafting ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students en masse after the High Court ruled that there was no legal basis for the community’s longstanding blanket exemption from military service.

The government voted on Monday to fire Baharav-Miara, but the High Court has issued an injunction against the ouster. Meanwhile, the attorney general told the court on Tuesday that the army was falling short of its mandated goals for drafting ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students.

The perennial hot-button issue of Haredi enlistment has become all the more fraught after the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023, which sparked the war in Gaza, forcing tens of thousands of reservists to serve for months to make up for a personnel shortage in the enlisted corps.

Some 80,000 ultra-Orthodox men aged 18 to 24 are currently believed to be eligible for military service, but have not enlisted.

Rabbi Yehuda Cohen, a member of Shas’s Council of Sages, was quoted by Haaretz at the Jerusalem protest as saying that the bid to enlist Haredi youth was the reason the war in Gaza has not ended: “Countries that were friendly with the nation of Israel are identifying with terrorists and murderers. If you stop the hatred toward Torah scholars, then the hatred toward the nation of Israel will stop.”