TEENAGER DIES DURING ULTRA-ORTHODOX PROTEST AGAINST CONSCRIPTION IN JERUSALEM

Fri 31 October 2025:

A teenage boy has fallen to his death during a mass ultra-Orthodox Jewish rally against military conscription in Jerusalem, which had shut down the main entrance to the city.

Packed crowds of mostly men clogged the roads around the Route 1 highway leading into Jerusalem. Israeli media estimated that about 200,000 people flocked to the rally.

At least 2,000 police officers were mobilised to respond to the demonstration.

Photos showed some had climbed atop roofs of buildings, a petrol station and onto cranes. The Israeli ambulance service said a 15-year-old fell to his death, and police said they had opened an investigation into the incident.

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The debate over mandatory military service, and those who are exempt from it, has long caused tensions within Israel’s deeply divided society and has placed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu under increasing political strain over the past year.

While ultra-Orthodox seminary students have long been exempt from mandatory military service, many Israelis fume at what they see as an unfair burden carried by the mainstream who serve.

“Right now, people who refuse to go to the army are taken to military prison,” said Shmuel Orbach, a protester, “It’s not so bad. But we are a Jewish country. You cannot fight against Judaism in a Jewish country; it does not work.”

Under a ruling established at the time of Israel’s creation in 1948, when the ultra-Orthodox were a very small community, men who devote themselves full-time to the study of sacred Jewish texts are given a de facto pass.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews make up 14 percent of Israel’s Jewish population, or about 1.3 million people, and roughly 66,000 men of military age currently benefit from the exemption.

That frustration only intensified during wars over the past two years that exacted the highest Israeli military death toll in decades as fighting stretched from the Gaza Strip to Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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