by Oren Ziv at Middle East Eye
Hundreds of thousands of ultra-Orthodox men protest in Jerusalem, with one teenager falling to his death
Hundreds of thousands of ultra-Orthodox men filled Jerusalem on Thursday in a demonstration against the Israeli state’s demand to enlist them into the army and the arrest of draft dodgers.
The protest, described earlier this week as the “demonstration of the million”, was a rare show of unity from all of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox factions but was marred by the death of a 15-year-old, who fell from a construction site.
Yesterday, rabbis of Chabad, an ultra-Orthodox faction with no clear political identification, issued a “call to participate in the prayer and cry rally in Jerusalem”.
“Today, all the ultra-Orthodox factions have come together,” Yehuda Hirsch, 20, told Middle East Eye at the demonstration. “We will not enlist in the army under any circumstances.”
“We are two opposites,” said Hirsch, a member of the ultra-Orthodox, anti-Zionist faction Neturei Karta, referring to the ultra-Orthodox on one side and the army and state on the other…
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