Haredi spiritual leader denies encouraging anti-IDF violence

A spokesman for Rabbi Dov Lando, the spiritual leader of the Degel HaTorah party, denies that his rhetoric is in any way responsible for inciting violence in the wake of yesterday’s mob attack on two IDF servicewoman in the ultra-Orthodox city of Bnei Brak.

“What is this nonsense? Where did he use rhetoric that even hinted that one should go to demonstrations or use force or do something similar to that,” the spokesman asks. “He said a thousand times at every opportunity that a yeshiva student is not allowed to leave the yeshiva” or go to demonstrations. “What else do they expect? That he activate a private police force?”

Following yesterday’s violence, Lando released a letter reiterating his previous call for ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students to refrain from attending demonstrations.

Lando, one of the most prominent rabbinic leaders of the so-called “Lithuanian” stream of ultra-Orthodoxy, has publicly instructed yeshiva students to ignore IDF conscription orders. Under Israeli law, someone inciting others to evade service during wartime is liable to a prison term of 15 years.

He has also stated that those enforcing conscription are fighting against God, and used his party’s mouthpiece, Yated Neeman, to accuse the government of declaring “war” against the Haredi community by trying to recruit yeshiva students. He has also indicated that those who arrest evaders are subject to divine retribution, has vowed that not one yeshiva student would be drafted into the military, and has feted evaders after their release from military prison.