Demonstrators take part in a protest calling for the release of hostages kidnapped in the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, in Tel Aviv, on March 14, 2024. (Credit: Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)
BEIRUT — Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported three very different kinds of protests in Israel Thursday evening.
One, attended by thousands of people, was held at Habima Square in Tel Aviv, calling for ultra-Orthodox Jews to be drafted into the Israeli army.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews, specifically Haredi Jews, have been traditionally exempt from military service — which is compulsory for all other citizens of Israel — on religious grounds. Last January, the Times of Israel reported that the country’s ultra-Orthodox population had risen to 1.28 million.
According to an early-November Washington Post article on the subject, an estimated 2,000 Haredi men with no military experience had volunteered for military service in the first month of the war, moved into action by the events of the Oct. 7 attack.
Ninety kilometers north, in Haifa, and with a very different tone, dozens of antiwar protesters gathered to call for a cease-fire in Gaza. One of the protesters, Haaretz reports, was holding up a sign that read “Stop the Genocide,” and was subsequently detained by the police, who also confiscated several other signs from the protest and warned people against “incitement against the country.”
In a third protest, back in Tel Aviv, hundreds of people marched calling for the release of hostages, holding torches and posters, and blocking the Ayalon highway, a major inter-city freeway. One of the protesters, a relative of a hostage still in Gaza, asked police officers not to be violent, telling them: "Instead of bringing them back, you attack us. How could this be? We aren't your enemies.”
The demonstrators have pledged to continue blocking the highway until the hostages are returned. Israeli authorities estimate there are 134 remaining in Gaza, 100 of which are still alive.