Hundreds of Haredi men block Jerusalem entrance over arrest of draft-dodger

Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox men demonstrated against the IDF military draft on Thursday, blocking the main entrance into Jerusalem during rush hour.

The so-called “Jerusalem faction,” consisting of several thousand followers of the late Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach, who passed away late last month, has been carrying out at-times violent protests against the military draft in recent months.

The protests aren’t over the actual drafting of ultra-Orthodox seminary students, who receive automatic draft waivers if they remain studying full-time in seminary during their draft years and for a few years afterward. But Auerbach’s followers have sought ways to stem a growing phenomenon of young Haredi men choosing to embrace military service, seeing it as a vehicle for their integration into the broader Israeli society and economy.

Thursday’s protest was sparked after a traffic cop discovered that a driver he had pulled over was listed as AWOL from the army because the young man, a student at Jerusalem’s Kol Torah Yeshiva, had refused to go through the IDF’s longstanding process for draft waivers, which involves officially joining the IDF, then obtaining the waiver and being discharged.