From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, May 13, 2025
Lapid backs planned draft dodger arrest campaign
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Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. 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"
Opposition Leader Yair Lapid and other opposition figures express approval of the upcoming military operation to arrest draft dodgers.
“The military police are not ‘arresting Haredim,’ they are arresting young Israelis who received a draft order during the war and did not show up at the military induction base to enlist in the defense of the state,” Lapid tweets.
The Democrats chairman Yair Golan tweets, “The law is the law. Recruitment is recruitment and equality is equality. Don’t stop, recruit everyone.”
In the wake of the latest coalition crisis, in which the Haredi parties threatened to bring down the coalition if even one yeshiva student is arrested, a Likud source tells the Maariv daily that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will pass an enlistment bill no matter what, even if he has to replace Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Yuli Edelstein.
The Times of Israel Community.