From the Liveblog of
Saturday, August 9, 2025
200 Hasidic men to demonstrate at military prison to protest draft-dodgers’ arrests
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleSam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. 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"
Some 200 members of the Boyan Hasidic group, on the orders of their spiritual leader, are on the way to demonstrate at the Beit Lid military prison, Haredi journalist Moshe Weisberg tweets.
According to Weisberg, the demonstration has been called to protest “the arrest of yeshiva students for the ‘crime’ of Torah study” and will last half an hour.
On Thursday, prominent Haredi leader Rabbi Dov Lando visited the prison to offer support to yeshiva students arrested for draft evasion, telling them that the entire Haredi community stands behind them.
For the past year, the Haredi leadership, including Lando, has rejected any attempt to find a compromise to draft at least some of the ultra-Orthodox youth to the military, after last year the High Court ruled that the decades-long blanket exemptions from army duty traditionally afforded to the Haredi community were illegal.
Lando, who serves as the spiritual leader for the United Torah Judaism party’s Degel HaTorah faction and is one of the most prominent figures in the non-Hasidic ultra-Orthodox community, has repeatedly told yeshiva students to ignore draft orders.
The Times of Israel Community.