WATCH: Female Israeli Soldier Uses Krav Maga To Fend Off Horde Of Hasidic Jews
Image by Getty
By Ari Feldman October 18, 2017
A female IDF solider was forced to use karate to fend off a swarm of Hasidic Jews protesting the compulsory military draft in Jerusalem Monday, the Washington Post reported. Nomi Golan, who was off duty at the time, was attempting to guide a car through the raucous protests.
“They attacked me, so as a soldier, a civilian, an old woman, young or no matter what role I or what I was wearing, I defended myself as I would in any other situation,” Golan told the Israeli news site First Report.
The Hasidic men are protesting the requirement that all Israelis enter military service at the age of 18. Though Israeli Arabs and the ultra-Orthodox are currently exempt from the draft, the law that ensures the ultra-Orthodox exemption is set to expire within a year.
Anti-draft riots are common in Jerusalem, with crowds of Hasidic men often stopping traffic and preventing buses from leaving their stations.
Contact Ari Feldman at feldman@forward.com or on Twitter @aefeldman.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
