Hundreds of thousands of “ultra-Orthodox” men protested this week in the Israel city of Jerusalem in opposition to the Israel government enforcing a military draft of members of their communities. You may not hear much about the protest from American media, but a Thursday Times of Israel report provides a rundown of some of the protest activities in Jerusalem. The report also includes video and photographs of the protest.
Addressing why the protest in Jerusalem took place, the Times of Israel article relates:
The protest was organized in response to the crackdown on ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, draft dodgers in recent months, during which time there have been over 870 arrests, amounting to just 7% of the 6,975 Haredi men who have been declared draft dodgers.
The fight over the conscription of military-aged men has become a point of contention over the last two years, ever since the clause in the Law for Security Service, which granted blanket military service exemptions for ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students, expired in June 2023. The following year, the High Court ruled that the government was therefore obligated to begin drafting them.
Despite the ruling, very few yeshiva students have enlisted since then, and the government has yet to pass a law regulating Haredi conscription, fearing that doing so will lead to the collapse of the coalition due to fierce opposition from the two Haredi Knesset parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism.
But the Israel Defense Forces and the defense establishment have said that the military needs 12,000 additional combat soldiers, due to the country’s heightened security needs and the deaths and injuries to thousands of soldiers over the two years of war since the October 7, 2023, Hamas invasion and massacre.
While these issues have been raging on in the background over the past two years, and to varying degrees, for decades prior, it was the arrests of hundreds of yeshiva students and plans to bring a revised bill regulating military conscription to a discussion in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee next week that led leaders of the ultra-Orthodox community to organize Thursday’s rally.
It was the first event in years to bring together all aspects of ultra-Orthodox society, albeit only the men, with Channel 12 noting that the last time all the sects united was in 2014, when a similar protest was held against efforts to pass a law that would require a quota of military-aged yeshiva students to enlist in the military each year.
And this sentence from the article’s description of the protest in Jerusalem will perplex many American readers who have accepted the false claim that Judaism is necessarily bound with Zionism:
Cries of ‘damn Zionists!’ could be heard echoing through the crowds at various points, and loud spiritual music was blared over speakers.
Writing in August of 2024 about the then developing resistance to this expansion of conscription in Israel, I commented:
Less than one percent of the men who have received the new draft orders have reported for military service. Also, protests against the draft effort have emerged in the affected communities. If the resistance stays strong, the Israel government will likely find its new manpower expansion initiative is both counterproductive to its war effort and to the stability of the nation.
That crisis for the Israel government that I predicted could come is now evident.
