2 minors nabbed for alleged attack on Shas MK’s son over Haredi draft exemption bill |
Two minors were detained on Monday for allegedly attacking the son of a lawmaker in Ashdod, appearing to target him over the ultra-Orthodox Shas party’s support for a bill to regulate military draft exemptions for yeshiva students.
The two allegedly attacked the son of Shas MK Yinon Azoulay while he was walking with a friend. The victim’s condition was unknown. According to Channel 12 news, the attackers cursed him over Shas’s backing of a bill regulating the conscription of yeshiva students, which the party sees as “the only thing that will save the world of Torah.”
Police said they arrested the two suspects near the scene and intended to request that their custody be extended.
The Shas party on Tuesday slammed what it said was violence from an “extremist faction” against Azoulay’s son.
“This is a dangerous red line being crossed by a group of unbridled rioters, whose actions defame the entire Haredi public and are a desecration of God’s name,” the party said in a statement demanding that police take action.
“It cannot be that an extremist group continues to terrorize the public and its elected officials, and goes unpunished again and again,” the party declared.
Azoulay is Shas’s representative on the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, which is debating a bill ostensibly aimed at boosting ultra-Orthodox enlistment to the Israel Defense Forces following the High Court of Justice’s 2024 ruling that sweeping Haredi exemptions from military service were illegal.
Some 80,000 ultra-Orthodox men aged between 18 and 24 are believed to be eligible for military service, but have not enlisted. The IDF has previously said it urgently needed 12,000 recruits, due to the strain on standing and reserve forces caused by the war against Hamas in Gaza and other military challenges.
The current version of the bill put forward by the government proposes continued military service exemptions to full-time yeshiva students while purportedly increasing conscription among graduates of Haredi educational institutions.
Critics, including the