Ultra-Orthodox protests erupt across Israel on haredi IDF enlistment day

Disturbance occurred when protesters attempted to block vehicles by lying down on the roadway in Kiryat Ono, Israeli police said.

Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) demonstrators took to the streets on Sunday to protest the Israeli army’s draft day, recruiting ultra-Orthodox conscripts into the Israeli army’s combat units.

Clashes broke out between police and ultra-Orthodox protesters in front of the Jerusalem recruitment office, while an illegal demonstration also took place near the IDF recruitment office in Kiryat Ono, blocking the entrance to the Tel Hashomer military base.

Disturbance occurred when protesters attempted to block vehicles by lying down on the roadway in Kiryat Ono, Israeli police said.

An ultra-Orthodox protester said “recruitment offices are like extermination ovens for us” when speaking to Kan News outside the Tel Hashomer base.

He added that offices are places “where hundreds and thousands of people entered wearing kippahs, tzitzit, and observing Shabbat and mitzvot, and tens of percent left without them.” […] we will continue to fight until the reign of evil is overthrown.

Clashes between police and ultra-Orthodox protesters at recruitment centers

Head of the IDF personnel planning branch, Brig.-Gen. Shai Tayeb informed the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee at the end of the recruitment day that there was an increase in the number of ultra-Orthodox recruits enlisted.

“As of noon, there were over 210 combat troops and over 140 combat support personnel, and it looks like in about 10 days it will end in the largest recruitment in recent years,” he said.

The protests took place during a full day of meetings on the ultra-Orthodox bill in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, which continued into the evening.

Critics of the new bill presented by Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Rep. Boaz Bismuth (Likud) say it fails to enforce the conscription of the ultra-Orthodox, delays time, and is a political solution that attempts to appease ultra-Orthodox parties to return to government after they resigned in protest against an earlier version of the bill in July.

Meanwhile, the IDF has repeatedly warned that it is urgently understaffed in combat units, especially after more than two years of war.

Sunday’s meetings focused, for the first time, on the draft punishment section, which has been widely criticized as far too lenient and ineffective in enforcing conscription into the Israeli army in the revised Bismuth version.

United Torah Judaism (TUJ) President Yitzhak Goldknopf sparked outrage when he compared enforcing conscription of Yeshiva students into the military to “putting a yellow badge on them,” in remarks during the panel.

“I beg you, exempt them from everything,” he told the panel, before appearing to reference the yellow star that the Nazis placed on Jews during the Holocaust.

“They shouldn’t be tied to quotas or targets,” Goldknopf said of yeshiva students.

“In what country in the world do they take a rabbi and punish him? And here in Israel we would decide to punish them? A yellow badge, how can you do such a thing?” Goldknopf told the panel.

These comments sparked outrage among opposition and Israeli coalition politicians.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid) asked: “How dare you? My father wore a yellow badge in the Budapest ghetto simply because there was no Jewish army to protect his life. My grandfather wore a yellow badge when he was murdered in a concentration camp.”

“What you said today in committee is every anti-Semite’s dream, both a degradation of the memory of the victims of the Holocaust and a demonstration of contempt for the IDF and its soldiers,” Lapid added.

Minister of Diaspora Affairs and Countering Anti-Semitism Amichai Chikili said: “I have met out-of-touch politicians before, but Goldknopf is truly in a league of his own. »

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (Religious Zionist Party) said it was good that Goldknopf was no longer part of the coalition. “It looks like he’s not coming back either,” Smotrich added.

“There is no place in our coalition for disconnected and obtuse people who continue to harm the people of Israel, IDF fighters and Torah scholars,” the finance minister said.