From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, June 16, 2026
Massive Haredi anti-draft protest planned for this week said canceled
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
A massive ultra-Orthodox anti-conscription demonstration planned for later this week was canceled after Rabbi Dov Lando, the senior spiritual leader of the United Torah Judaism party’s Degel HaTorah faction, expressed opposition, the Israel Hayom daily reports.
Lando is currently on a fundraising trip in the United States to compensate for recent cuts to yeshiva budgets implemented on the order of the High Court of Justice. Asked about the report, a spokesman for Lando in Israel says that he “doesn’t know” about it.
Recent weeks have seen a spate of mass Haredi demonstrations against the arrest of draft evaders, including violent attacks and protests at police stations and the homes of security officials and a judge, as well as a large demonstration last week that blocked traffic on central highways.
According to public broadcaster Kan, this week’s demonstration, which likely would have taken place on Wednesday, was to have featured large convoys of hundreds of cars blaring slogans and slowing traffic while en route to an IDF military prison where draft evaders are being held.
It had been given the go-ahead by Rabbi Moshe Hillel Hirsch, another of Degel HaTorah’s top rabbis, whom the network quoted as saying that a protest was necessary so that the public “can see that something is being done.”
Following a mob attack on two female IDF servicewomen in Bnei Brak in February, both Lando and Hirsch had called on ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students to refrain from attending demonstrations, stating that it was “strictly forbidden, under any circumstances, to participate in or be present among those who go to places where there are confrontations with the police.”
A planning document for this week’s demonstration approved by Hirsch and published by Kan stated that it would have been carried out with police approval and without “being drawn into unnecessary violence and provocations, especially since the public will remain inside vehicles and everything will be done in an orderly and respectful manner.”
A spokesman for the ultra-Orthodox Shas party tells The Times of Israel that it is not involved in the demonstration.
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