Protest group demonstrates against ‘evasion law’ outside Likud MK Bismuth’s home

Members of the Brothers and Sisters in Arms protest group hold a demonstration outside of the Tel Aviv home of Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Boaz Bismuth, pledging that they will not allow him to pass an “evasion law” exempting ultra-Orthodox Jews from military service.

In a tweet, the group accuses the Likud MK of being “a puppet on a string” appointed to his position in order to advance the legislation, which had been held up by previous chairman Yuli Edelstein amid a spat with Haredi politicians and what the military has called an urgent manpower shortage.

“Let it be clear: Someone who refuses to meet with reservists who are acting against draft evasion but meets with representatives of 80,000 young ultra-Orthodox draft dodgers is signaling to the public that reservists and their families are not of interest to him,” the group states.

While Bismuth has met with groups representing reservists, he has declined to meet with Brothers and Sisters in Arms, demanding that it first repudiate previous calls for reservists to refuse to volunteer for service.

Prior to the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack, the group, which rose to prominence as part of the wider protest movement against the government’s proposed judicial overhaul, said that reservists should not volunteer if the controversial legislation limiting the courts’ authority was passed.

הפגנת אחים לנשק מול ביסמוט הבוקר

צילום אדר איל pic.twitter.com/r0DeBImVtE

— לירי בורק שביט (@lirishavit) August 14, 2025

Responding to Bismuth’s conditions, Brothers and Sisters in Arms earlier this week issued one of its own. The Israel Hayom daily reported that the group demanded that he explicitly state that he did not support exempting tens of thousands of yeshiva students and that he not meet with Haredi party representatives nor rabbis who called on their followers to ignore draft orders.

Addressing his committee on Tuesday afternoon, Bismuth told lawmakers that he had held “dozens of meetings” since being appointed to head the committee last week in “an effort to hear all the voices in Israeli society and to conduct the discussions here in cooperation, together.”