Twenty-five ultra-Orthodox extremists were arrested Tuesday night after breaking into the yard of the home of the IDF’s chief military police officer, Brig. Gen. Yuval Yamin, but 13 have since been released.
The remaining 12, who are suspected of taking part in the break-in, will be brought for a remand hearing at the Ashkelon Magistrate’s Court. The incident was meticulously planned and took place while members of Yamin’s family were inside the home.
12 extermist Haredi face remand after break-in at top IDF officer’s home
Footage from the scene showed several dozen extremists entering the officer’s yard and clashing with police officers who arrived to remove them. According to the ultra-Orthodox news site Kikar HaShabbat, Rabbi Moshe Shmeida, head of the Grodno Yeshiva in Ashdod, instructed his students before the break-in to “maintain secrecy” and travel to Ashkelon for an “angry protest against the arrest of two yeshiva students.” Shortly afterward, his students were among those who broke into Yamin’s home.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir called the incident “the crossing of a dangerous red line” and urged “determined action by all law enforcement and security bodies to bring those involved to justice.”
But the red lines Zamir described have been crossed repeatedly, including in incidents in which female soldiers entering Bnei Brak were attacked, while police and the government continue to deliberately avoid enforcing existing Israeli law, under which tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox men are required to enlist in the IDF as long as their status has not been regulated under another law.
Even after the serious incident, which drew sweeping condemnation, most coalition leaders, including the prime minister and defense minister, avoided noting that the intruders were ultra-Orthodox or draft dodgers. In fact, the only coalition party leader to identify the rioters was Otzma Yehudit chairman Itamar Ben-Gvir, who called them “a handful of anarchists.”
Ben-Gvir himself, however, is facing sharp criticism over the police’s failure to confront the phenomenon. In similar disturbances in the past, including when hundreds of ultra-Orthodox extremists surrounded a police station in Ofakim, police preferred to release detainees in order to end the riots rather than try to enforce the law.
Naftali Bennett, chairman of the “Beyachad” party, attacked the government Tuesday night, saying: “You dismantled the police. You transferred billions to draft dodgers in violation of the law. What did you think would happen? We will fix it soon.”
The IDF, it should be recalled, avoids arresting deserters in ultra-Orthodox population centers because of a broad mechanism in which, the moment military police soldiers are spotted in a neighborhood, crowds take to the streets to intimidate them. To deal with riots of such scale by civilians, the IDF needs police assistance, but police deliberately refrain from sending officers to help arrest deserters.
The result is that despite the High Court of Justice ruling, the government is avoiding enforcement of the existing law against tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox men who refuse to comply with draft orders sent to them.