‘Declaration of war against Shabbat’: UTJ MKs slam High Court for order allowing protests

By Sam Sokol 4 April 2026, 9:22 pm

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Sam 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"

MK Moshe Gafni, the chairman of the ultra-Orthodox Degel HaTorah faction, accuses the High Court of Justice of issuing an illegal ruling, after the court handed down an interim order effectively forbidding law enforcement from forcibly dispersing anti-war protests of less than 600 attendees at Tel Aviv’s Habima Square, and less than 150 attendees in Jerusalem, Haifa and Kfar Saba.

“The High Court judges prove once again a lack of responsibility toward what is happening in the country, alongside a lack of sensitivity to subjects sacred to the Jewish people,” says Gafni.

“In the midst of the Holy Shabbat, they allow an outrageous ruling for a protest against the war just to prove their superiority over the Israeli public. We hope that this behavior by these disconnected judges will vanish from the world, beyond the fact that their decision is contrary to the law,” he adds.

The decision is also condemned by Deputy Communications Minister Yisrael Eichler, a member of the Hasidic Agudat Yisrael faction which, together with Degel HaTorah, comprises the larger United Torah Judaism party.

The court’s ruling, says Eichler, constitutes “a declaration of war against the sanctity of Shabbat and against the tradition of the Jewish people” and the justices “want to turn Israel into a nation like all nations” and are working to “incite citizens against one another in protests against the defensive war against Israel’s enemies.”

“The High Court of Justice judges proved today that even from the abyss it is still possible to descend to the lowest depths of Sheol,” he argues, using a Hebrew phrase for the depths of hell.