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Monday, September 15, 2025
Haredi draft dodger jumps from balcony to avoid arrest by police, says group
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"
An ultra-Orthodox yeshiva student escaped arrest for draft evasion by the military police last night by jumping off his apartment’s balcony, the extremist Jerusalem Faction announces.
In a statement, the hardline anti-enlistment Haredi group says that the military police raided the Netivot home of a 20-year-old student of Jerusalem’s Shaarei Shalom Yeshiva after he failed to obey conscription orders, at which point he “jumped off the balcony and escaped.”
It remains unclear why this specific evader was targeted by police for a raid.
In an earlier statement today, the Jerusalem Faction announced that eight draft dodgers, mostly belonging to the Breslov Hasidic sect, were arrested this morning at Ben Gurion Airport while trying to leave the country. The group claimed that 33 draft dodgers are currently being held in military prisons. An IDF spokesperson does not immediately confirm or deny the Jerusalem Faction’s numbers.
The Times of Israel Community.