Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

40 Haredi Orthodox Arrested For Protesting Arrest Of Draft-Dodging Student

JERUSALEM (JTA) — More than 40 haredi Orthodox protesters were arrested in Jerusalem during a demonstration against the arrest of a yeshiva student who refused to register for the draft.

The demonstration on Thursday morning closed an intersection near the entrance of Jerusalem.

Police and some of the estimated 400 protesters clashed during the demonstration, which also stopped the Jerusalem light rail on Jaffa Road. The demonstrators shouted “We will die before we enlist,” Ynet reported.

The demonstration that closed Jerusalem roads came a few hours before the start of the Jerusalem Pride Parade, that will close roads and bring out extra security.

While haredi Orthodox men studying in yeshiva are exempted from the draft, they are required to appear at an enlistment office to present evidence of their studies and sign a deferral. But some members of the community, including those associated with the Jerusalem Faction, a radical haredi group, refuse to even sign the deferral.

A bill setting military enlistment quotas for haredi Orthodox yeshiva students passed its initial reading in the Knesset at the beginning of July. The legislation requires that a minimum number of students serve in the military, or the government will reduce the annual budget allocation for their yeshivas. The target will increase each year for 10 years. It will likely be reintroduced when the Knesset returns from its three-month recess in October. The legislation could bring down the current government if the haredi Orthodox parties, which are part of the ruling government coalition, leave the coalition over it.

Alyssa Fisher is a news writer at the Forward. Email her at [email protected], or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher

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

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.