Hostages forum demands Haredi anti-draft protesters quit ‘cynical’ use of movement’s symbols

30 October 2025, 10:12 am

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A demonstrator holds up a poster of Haredi draft evader Ariel Shamai which reads: "Bring him back to yeshiva now!" and in smaller print on the left: "Until the last hostage," imitating the rhetoric of the hostage families' protest movement, during an anti-draft demonstration in Jerusalem on October 22, 2025. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum demands an ultra-Orthodox yeshiva apologize and pay NIS 400,000 ($123,000) in damages for appropriating symbols of the pro-hostage deal movement in its campaign against the jailing of Haredi draft-dodgers.

In a statement, the forum says it sent the Ateret Shlomo yeshiva in Beit Shemesh a warning letter last night, “following cynical, forbidden, and derogatory use of symbols, designs, messages and materials belonging to the families’ struggle for the return of their loved ones.”

Haredi organizations have in recent months spoofed the iconic “kidnapped” posters representing the plight of the hostages in order to call for the release of ultra-Orthodox men arrested for avoiding mandatory service in the Israel Defense Forces.

A mass demonstration is planned today against conscripting Haredi men, who have long enjoyed a de facto exemption from military service on the basis of full-time Torah study.