Around 40 ultra-Orthodox Jewish men who refused military service were arrested at Tel Aviv’s airport after returning to Israel from the United States on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Israeli Army Radio reported that the mass arrests took place after the men arrived on a morning flight from New York.<\/p>\n
The ultra-Orthodox Chabad movement, to which the men belonged, has announced a series of protests in response.<\/p>\n
The Times of Israel newspaper reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had criticized the arrests of ultra-Orthodox draft evaders as “harmful.”<\/p>\n
Netanyahu, who leads the right-wing Likud party, is relying on the support of ultra-Orthodox parties in parliamentary elections scheduled for next week.<\/p>\n
According to Army Radio, military police had received advance information that the men were aboard a flight from the US and made preparations to arrest them upon arrival.<\/p>\n
Additional military police units were deployed to the airport to detain all the men, who were then transported by bus to a major military recruitment centre near Tel Aviv.<\/p>\n
Those willing to immediately report for military service and put on a uniform would receive a suspended sentence, the broadcaster reported.<\/p>\n
Those who refused would face trial and be sent to a military prison.<\/p>\n
Army Radio also reported that the military had warned Israeli police of possible mass protests and urged them to take appropriate security precautions.<\/p>\n
The dispute over compulsory military service for ultra-Orthodox Jews has long been a source of deep tensions in Israel.<\/p>\n
The military is pushing for their conscription because of a shortage of combat soldiers, while ultra-Orthodox parties oppose mandatory military service for members of their religious community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Around 40 ultra-Orthodox Jewish men who refused military service were arrested at Tel Aviv’s airport after returning to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":652194,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":["post-652193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652193","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=652193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/652194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}