From the Liveblog of
Thursday, August 7, 2025
UTJ lawmaker protests draft dodger arrests, Bnei Brak gears up for large demonstration
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"
United Torah Judaism MK Meir Porush arrives at the Justice Ministry to protest the arrest of yeshiva students who evaded military draft orders, declaring in a statement that he intends to move his office’s activities to a spot outside the ministry and to forgo food for nine hours a day.
“I cannot sit comfortably in my office when the military is roaming around at night and arresting yeshiva students. It is my duty as a public representative to express our protest against the measures demanded by the attorney general. If the persecution of Torah students does not stop, it will lead to disaster for the people of Israel,” Porush declares, a day after two yeshiva students were imprisoned, sparking widespread anger in the community.
A Times of Israel investigation earlier this year found that a telephone hotline linked to Porush, then the Jerusalem affairs minister, had been advising yeshiva students to ignore draft orders and lie to the Israel Defense Forces.
This morning, several Haredi newspapers declared war against the IDF’s efforts to enforce the law against Haredi draft dodgers. Porush was quoted in the Hamevaser daily, which he is seen as having wide influence over, as saying that a message must be sent that “harming the Torah of Israel is a declaration of war against 1.39 million Haredi citizens.”
Asked what declaring war means on a practical level, a senior Haredi political source told The Times of Israel that, in his opinion, the entire Haredi community “has now become the Jerusalem Faction,” referring to an extremist ultra-Orthodox group that regularly holds raucous demonstrations against the enlistment of yeshiva students.
A source close to Rabbi Dov Lando, the spiritual leader of the Degel HaTorah faction that is part of the UTJ party, says that no final decisions as to strategy have been made and that “everything is open.”
According to media reports, plans for a large Haredi demonstration near Bnei Brak this afternoon have led police to announce the closure of Route 4 where it skirts the Haredi city east of Tel Aviv starting at 4 p.m.
The Times of Israel Community.