{"id":594964,"date":"2026-08-25T00:18:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T00:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/594964\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T00:18:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T00:18:10","slug":"haredi-protesters-block-israels-highway-4-after-draft-dodgers-arrest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/594964\/","title":{"rendered":"Haredi protesters block Israel’s Highway 4 after draft dodger’s arrest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dozens of haredi (ultra-Orthodox) protesters from the Jerusalem Faction (Peleg Yerushalmi) blocked\u00a0Highway 4<\/a> near Bnei Brak<\/a> on Monday afternoon to protest the arrest of a haredi draft dodger, according to Israeli media.<\/p>\n

The protest began just before 5 p.m., and the highway was reopened to traffic just after 9 p.m.<\/p>\n

Ahead of the protest, police said Highway 4 will be blocked between the Aluf Sade Interchange in Ramat Gan and the Em Hamoshavot Interchange in Petah Tikva.<\/p>\n

The protest is a response to the arrest of Israel Gohfi, a haredi yeshiva student and IDF draft dodger. According to “Am Kadosh,” an organization that provides legal assistance to haredi draft dodgers, Gohfi was arrested on his way to his yeshiva in northern Israel after his bus pass malfunctioned and authorities were alerted that he had failed to respond to his draft summons.<\/p>\n

Protests by the haredi community against the military draft and the arrest of draft dodgers<\/a> have spurred numerous demonstrations throughout the year, resulting in the shutdown of multiple public transportation routes and key highways.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara<\/a> called for renewed arrests and stricter economic sanctions against military draft evaders. She warned that weak enforcement against ultra-Orthodox men is undermining the draft process, ultimately leaving potential recruits out of the army and leading to unequal enforcement compared to the rest of the population.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Attorney-General\u2019s Office released these findings in a summary of an August 3 meeting chaired by Baharav-Miara that reviewed the enforcement of draft obligations for the 2025 draft year.<\/p>\n

Military officials said the gap is closely tied to who is actually arrested.<\/p>\n

Criminal proceedings typically begin when enforcement authorities detain a draft evader or when the evader voluntarily reports to a military facility. Fewer arrests result in fewer prosecutions.<\/p>\n

Baharav-Miara concluded that the current level of criminal enforcement does not satisfy the requirements of the state. According to the summary, military officials warned that this gap harms effective draft enforcement, leaving recruitment potential unrealized and resulting in unequal enforcement against different sectors of the population.<\/p>\n

Despite these issues, the review noted that Haredi enlistment has increased significantly over the past year.<\/p>\n

Hodaya Ran contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dozens of haredi (ultra-Orthodox) protesters from the Jerusalem Faction (Peleg Yerushalmi) blocked\u00a0Highway 4 near Bnei Brak on Monday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583291,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[12186,132751,42,1031,43,52,40,38,41,39,122898],"class_list":["post-594964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-haredi-draft","tag-haredi-protests","tag-headlines","tag-idf","tag-news","tag-protests","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-ultra-orthodox-draft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=594964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594964\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}