Ultra-Orthodox Children in Upstate New York Protest Israel Draft
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
Elementary and middle school students in a New York haredi Orthodox school demonstrated against an Israeli bill aiming to draft haredim into the Israel Defense Forces.
Students at United Talmudical Academy in Spring Valley, N.Y. held signs and listened to their rabbis give speeches outside their school on Wednesday, according to the Mid-Hudson News.
The signs compared the Israeli government to the ancient Egyptian Pharaoh, the Roman military commander Titus, who conquered Jerusalem in the Second Temple era, and Adolf Hitler.
“In Israel, they have a government that is against religious freedom, and because of that, we want to explain to the children that it is against our religion and we are not with” Israel, said ninth-grade teacher Rabbi Moshe Kaplan, according to Mid-Hudson News. “There is separate Zionism and Judaism. They are not the same thing. We are Jewish and they are not Jewish.”
Large protests against the proposed law have taken place in New York and Jerusalem. The proposed law passed Israel’s cabinet on Sunday.
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