Extremist haredim protest against jail sentences for draft dodgers
Hundreds of haredi (ultra-Orthodox) men belonging to the extremist Jerusalem Faction took to the streets of Bnei Brak and Jerusalem again on Sunday to protest several jail sentences imposed by a military court against several yeshiva students who illegally evaded IDF service.
The protesters blocked major roads and junctions in both cities, at times bringing traffic to a halt.
The police removed protesters from the roads, arresting at least 20 men in Jerusalem and Bnei Brak.
Extremists in Beit Shemesh also succeeded in shutting down some roads in that city.
“Thousands of yeshiva students are on their way to traffic arteries around the country with clear intent to sanctify the name of Heaven and be imprisoned for a lengthy period of time,” the Jerusalem Faction said in a statement issued to the press before the protests began. “Nothing will break their courageous spirit in their struggle against the decree of enlistment of yeshiva students.”
The Jaffa Military Court sentenced 11 yeshiva students to sentences of up to 90 days for failing to undertake the necessary bureaucratic process required to obtain an IDF service exemption.
The sentences are longer than those handed down in the past and are possibly an attempt to curb the phenomenon of yeshiva students failing to apply for their exemptions as prescribed by law.
The Jerusalem Faction and its leader Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach have instructed yeshiva students associated with the group not to cooperate in any way with the IDF or the Defense Ministry, leading to a situation in which hundreds of its students are now technically absent without leave and liable to arrest by military police.
Mainstream haredi yeshiva students, in most cases, perform the requisite bureaucratic procedures to obtain their exemptions, which are then quickly granted.
The stance of the Jerusalem Faction and its leadership is largely a tactic resulting from internal political divisions within the Ashkenazi haredi non-hassidic community. Auerbach lost a battle for leadership of the group against Rabbi Aharon Leib Shteinman in 2012, after the death of the group’s previous leader Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv.
Its more hardline stance of not cooperating with the IDF and the Defense Ministry has helped the Jerusalem Faction carve out a political bloc, giving it a specific identity and rallying cry of fighting the state’s efforts to draft more haredi men into the army.
Claims by Auerbach and the heads of the Jerusalem Faction that haredi men are being coercively drafted into the army are fallacious, however, and haredi yeshiva students who apply for exemptions continue to receive them without hindrance.