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Saturday, August 9, 2025
Haredi leaders considering holding rallies outside Israeli embassies to protest draft-dodgers’ arrests — source
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"
Senior leaders of the ultra-Orthodox community are considering holding demonstrations outside of Israeli embassies around the world in order to protest the arrest of Haredi draft evaders by the military police, a source with knowledge of the senior rabbis’ thinking tells The Times of Israel.
While the rabbis are also considering holding a massive “prayer rally” in Israel “at some point soon,” the source dismisses a Friday report by Channel 12 that Rabbi Dov Lando, one of the most prominent rabbinic leaders of the so-called “Lithuanian” stream of ultra-Orthodoxy, is promoting an economic boycott of Israel.
According to the network, Lando, who serves as the spiritual leader of the Degel HaTorah faction in the United Torah Judaism party, reached out to representatives of the hardline anti-Zionist Eda Haredit group to propose what it called “a coordinated Haredi move to withdraw financial investments from Israel.”
Such ideas “are less relevant because you need a lot of businesspeople for that, and that’s also too drastic a step. But rallies and demonstrations in front of embassies make sense,” the source adds.
Asked about the Channel 12 report, a spokesman for Rabbi Lando replies that he is unaware of the specific proposal but that “everything is on the table” and that it is the rabbi himself who will make the final decision.
Last week, following the arrest of two Haredi draft evaders, Lando stated that the “State of Israel has declared war on yeshiva students” and that “Haredi Judaism will embark on a global struggle like never before.”
The Times of Israel Community.