Hundreds in Tel Aviv rail against Haredi draft exemptions

Several hundred people are gathered at Habima Square in Tel Aviv for an anti-government protest.

The demonstration began with a moment of silence for 893 soldiers killed since the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023.

The silence was pierced by a quarrel that ignited on the square’s southern edge, where left-wing protesters typically gather ahead of Saturday-night demonstrations with signs decrying “war crimes” and “genocide” in Gaza. One man bearing an Israeli flag emblazoned with an anti-government logo was yelling at the left-wing activists that they should be “embarrassed” and appeared to almost come to blows with one of them before others separated them.

The moment of silence ended, and the MC, Ayelet Hashachar Seidoff, an attorney and head of  Mothers on the Front, an anti-government group of soldiers’ mothers, launched into a tirade against Haredi exemption from military service.

“You are more Jewish than all the Haredim in Bnei Brak,” she told the cheering crowd, naming a large ultra-Orthodox city that neighbors Tel Aviv.

One of the speakers, mother of two combat soldiers Vered Shavit Fima, slammed the government’s attempt to codify the Haredi draft exemptions.

Soldiers are suffering grave physical and psychological damage and are demanding an end to the war, she said. And when they come home, she added, they discover “deals made at their expense, the draft evasion law, the lengthening of service, money given to people who don’t serve while they are missing equipment.”

In the meantime, the left-wing activists left to attend a silent vigil for slain Gaza children on Kaplan Street.

Protesters will join up with hostage families marching from separate demonstrations on Hostages Square and Begin Road. Attendees of the three rallies will then march on to a large demonstration outside the US Embassy Branch Office on Ben Yehuda Street.