Police clashed with ultra-Orthodox demonstrators at the Michve Alon base near Tiberias in northern Israel, arresting 12 protesters, Israeli media reported on Wednesday.
The Committee for Saving the World of the Torah announced that if the police continue to prevent protesters from reaching the recruitment office in Tiberias, thousands of protesters will block traffic across the country in numerous demonstrations.
Demonstrators claimed that the police used unlawful force and halted buses from reaching Tiberias. Rabbi Asher Deutsch, a yeshiva head and leader of a Lithuanian faction, said, "It is the legal right of thousands of Jews to demonstrate in front of the recruitment office gates," he stated.
These demonstrations follow an incident earlier on Wednesday morning when hundreds of ultra-Orthodox individuals blocked the entrance to the Michve Alon military base. Soldiers were forced to evacuate the angry protesters. So far, 12 demonstrators have been arrested.
The IDF decided to move the recruitment of ultra-Orthodox individuals from the recruitment office to a military base in the north. However, this decision led to the arrival of hundreds of ultra-Orthodox at the base, attempting to prevent the conscription of their peers. The IDF claims that this recruitment was organized for the benefit of ultra-Orthodox youth from the north.
Although a recruitment office operates in Tiberias, the IDF preferred to hold the recruitment day at the military base to avoid demonstrators influencing the young men summoned for drafting, which occurred about two weeks ago at the Tel HaShomer recruitment center. The IDF Personnel Directorate coordinated with the Northern District Police to secure the process. Since Wednesday morning, the police have deployed security forces around the base to prevent demonstrators from approaching the ultra-Orthodox recruits.
The IDF reported that Border Police successfully kept the protesters away from the base's fences, though the police had to disperse a large number of demonstrators using tear gas.
Northern Israel 'is like a bonfire,' rabbi says
"The whole north is like a bonfire," reads a circulated flyer, "the heat of the draft of the ultra-Orthodox into the army of destruction, which began to rage last week at the Tel Hashomer recruitment office and was halted by thousands of fiercely fighting ultra-Orthodox Jews who petitioned, is now directed at the approximately 120 ultra-Orthodox youth from the north who were summoned to the Tiberias recruitment office," Rabbi Dov Kook, a highly influential rabbi of a large ultra-Orthodox community in Tiberias, who called on his followers to join the protest in a letter published on Tuesday evening.
"The ultra-Orthodox from northern cities are uniting, one by one, with one heart, to rescue those who were chosen to be kidnapped to the impure army."
"For those who respect the Torah, it seems that it is a mitzvah of Kiddush Hashem to participate in a protest demonstration against decrees of hatred of the Torah. This is a Kiddush Hashem, to participate with heart and tears, continuing the mourning of Tisha B'Av for the tenth day."