A 19-year-old haredi yeshiva student who hails from the West Bank Jewish haredi town of Modi’in Illit was arrested by the IDF on Wednesday and jailed for draft evasion.
Haredi Yeshiva Student Arrested And Jailed For Draft Evasion
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
A 19-year-old haredi yeshiva student who hails from the West Bank Jewish haredi town of Modi’in Illit was arrested by the IDF on Wednesday and jailed for draft evasion.
According to a report in Yeshiva World based on a report by the non-hasidic Ashkenazi haredi rebel faction’s newspaper HaPeles, the student appeared before a military tribunal Thursday evening and was sentenced to serve five days in military prison.
The student had failed to report to an IDF induction center because the leader of the haredi rebel faction, Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach, ordered yeshiva students not to cooperate with the IDF by reporting to induction centers, even though every haredi yeshiva student who does report is given an immediate exemption from serving in the IDF if requested. Those exemptions appear to violate a ruling issued by Israel’s High Court of Justice, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s last two governments have continued to issue them, anyway.
Netanyahu remains in power largely because of the support of haredi political parties.
Haredi yeshiva students affiliated with the mainstream haredi factions report to IDF induction centers, where they get their likely illegal exemptions and immediately return to their yeshivas while non-haredi Israelis are drafted and serve close to three years on active military duty.