Thousands of ultra-orthodox protest looming army enlistment
Demonstrators also threw rocks at an ultra-orthodox minister's car as he drove past the really in Jerusalem
Thousands of ultra-orthodox Jews demonstrated in Jerusalem on Sunday against a Supreme Court ruling ordering them to be drafted to the IDF.
Some were holding signs saying “[We won’t] join the enemy’s army” while others burned garbage cans and threw rocks at police officers.
Rocks were also thrown at Construction and Housing Minister Yitzchak Goldknopf’s car when he drove past the rally.
The extremist Eda Haredit and Jerusalem Faction were among those demonstrating on Sunday, but rabbis from the Shas party and Agudat Israel also encouraged people to join the demonstration, according to Haaretz Daily.
The demonstration comes after the Supreme Court ruled against a law exempting ultra-orthodox from the army.
“In the midst of a gruelling war, the burden of inequality is harsher than ever and demands a solution…. Discrimination regarding the most precious thing of all – life itself – is of the worst kind,” the Supreme Court said in its ruling last week.
The “status-quo” agreement in Israel has exempted ultra-orthodox boys and girls from the army for decades, whereas secular and less religious Israeli Jewish girls and boys have to serve roughly two and three years in the IDF respectively.
In 2017, after years of debate over the arrangement, the Supreme Court finally ruled that the exemption of strictly-Orthodox from the army was unconstitutional.
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