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Hundreds of Charedi boys gathered in the West Bank yesterday, with many co-opting symbols closely associated with hostage families to protest the government’s plans to conscript yeshiva students. Young protestors wore yellow hats – the colour associated with the hostage campaign – bearing slogans including “bring him back to yeshiva now”, resembling the “bring them home” refrain of hostage groups. Teachers from the Ateret Shlomo yeshiva network gathered their classes outside the Beit Lid military prison, where Ariel Shamai – an Ateret Shlomo student detained for defying a draft order – is being held. Questioned about the use of symbols evoking the hostage campaign, Rabbi Sholom Ber Sorotzkin, head of the network, drew a direct comparison between Shamai and those taken captive by Hamas. "They accuse us of using the symbols of the hostages, but they yanked Ariel from his home," he said. "The hostages are ours as well. We studied for them. We performed large miracles for them so that they could escape captivity. “[To] pry us away from Torah is to cut off oxygen from a sick patient.” Further demonstrations are planned this week in Jerusalem, with hundreds of thousands of Charedi men expected to march through the capital to protest the imprisonment of draft dodgers. The issue of Charedi conscription has become one of the most politically contentious in Israel, with the Shas party, one of two Charedi factions in the Knesset, resigning its members from ministerial roles over the continued push to draft yeshiva students. Unlike the United Torah Judaism faction, which quit the coalition in July, Shas remains part of the government, but its withdrawal, should it happen, would force Prime Minister Netanyahu into minority government. It comes after Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, the former Sephardi chief rabbi of Israel, labelled a fellow rabbi, whose son fell while serving the the IDF, a “heretic” for suggesting that Charedi youth should enlist. An undated leaked recording released by Kol Chai radio reportedly saw Yosef target Rabbi Tamir Granot, the head of Hesder Yeshiva Orot Shaul in Tel Aviv - a yeshiva which combines religious education with military service. "There was one rabbi — I don’t know if he’s a rabbi — Granot, the head of a hesder yeshiva. The way he spoke against us on television. Aren’t you afraid of the humiliation of the Torah scholars?," Yosef is reported to have said. "I think there are some of them who, if they were to come to join a minyan [prayer quorum], we would not include them in the minyan. "They fall under the category of apikores [heretics]. Not all of them."
