Haredim clash with police as first draftees slated to report to IDF recruitment office
Violence toward female journalists, shouts of ‘shiksa’; police say 3 arrested; ‘This is Auschwitz, the last stop,’ says demonstrator; only a third of draftees expected to serve
Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox men clashed with police on Monday at the Tel Hashomer military recruitment office as they protested the start of the controversial military draft for members of the Haredi community.
Police said three people were arrested.
Footage from the scene showed scuffles between demonstrators and police. Some of the protesters chanted: “To prison and not to the army.”
Video on social media showed one protester announcing, “This is Auschwitz, this is the last stop.”
Several female journalists reported violence toward them by the rioters, in addition to offensive chanting.
Merav Sever of Israel Hayom and Rotem Golan of the Knesset Channel said bottles were thrown at them and they were berated with chants that included the derogatory term “shiksa.”
גללים של סוסים הושלכו עליי עכשיו
פגעו בי ביד ובגב
בתוך הפגנת הפורעים הקיצונים –
פה בבקו״ם בתל השומרשוב – אין עיכובים או מעצרים
בלתי נתפס@KnessetT @israelpolice pic.twitter.com/Mylcp0KqFR— רותם גולן – Rotem Golan (@RotemGolan_) August 5, 2024
Golan said someone knocked her phone to the ground, with no reaction from cops against the attacker.
She said horse feces, water and yogurt were also hurled at her.
The demonstration came as the first 900 previously exempted yeshiva students were due to show up at the recruitment offices — 500 on Monday and 400 on Tuesday — although many senior Haredi spiritual leaders have forbidden their disciples from responding to the call-ups.
The first phase for the recruits includes a series of medical and psychological tests, as well as a meeting with a screening officer.
The Walla new site cited an estimation that only a third of the draftees will actually end up serving.
Haredi activists who oppose military service for their community regularly stage raucous protests in Jerusalem, Bnei Brak and elsewhere, which snarl up traffic and are forcibly broken up by police.
The protests were expected to grow later in the day, and police preemptively announced some roads will be blocked to traffic.
A number of senior rabbis have called for the young men not to report to the recruitment office, with the most extreme ultra-Orthodox groups calling on them to demonstrate.
According to the Ynet news site, flyers posted in a number of Haredi neighborhoods said the draft was “a terrible Holocaust of young ultra-Orthodox Jews in the Holy Land.”
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 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 Hamas attack and the ensuing war, in which more than 680 soldiers have been killed and over 300,000 citizens called up to reserve duty.
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.
At the end of each of the three batches of draft orders, the ministry said, “a learning process will take place in order to improve the following waves.”
Last week, the Attorney General’s Office instructed the army to expand its mobilization to include full-time yeshiva students and not only members of the Haredi community who do not study Torah and who are part of the workforce.
The 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 Haredi factions and many senior Likud lawmakers.
The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee is working on an ultra-Orthodox enlistment bill that chairman Yuli Edelstein (Likud) has said will advance only if there is “broad agreement.”
