Haredi mob violently blocks arrest of IDF draft dodger after senior rabbi denounces Zionism and Israeli state

Tensions around the military recruitment of ultra-Orthodox men returned to center stage on Monday, as inflammatory statements by a senior rabbi drew criticism before a mob violently blocked the arrest of a draft dodger in the city of Modi’in.

Opposition leaders quickly seized on the incidents to criticize the government for failing to pass a new IDF draft law and the coalition’s intention to again join forces with the ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) parties after the upcoming elections.

On Monday evening, hundreds of Haredi men descended on an apartment building in Modi’in in central Israel, after being alerted through the hardline Jerusalem Faction’s “Black Color” network that IDF police were trying to arrest a man who had failed to report for the military draft.

According to the IDF, the mob “acted in an organized manner in an attempt to disrupt” the arrest, and “endanger the safety of the soldiers.”

לא יודע איך החיים הובילו אותי לזה. אבל אחת בלילה ומאות חרדים הגיעו ללב שכונה במודיעין בעקבות מעצר של עריק חרדי. "שחררו את החטוף". המשטרה כאן אבל בכוחות מועטים. כל השכונה ערב. הישארו עמנו. https://t.co/wMnEXgnf9s

— Josh Breiner (@JoshBreiner) October 5, 2026

“The Israel Police arrived at the scene and acted to restore order and disperse the gatherings. The incident involved significant resistance and disruption to the activities of security forces in the area. The IDF strongly condemns any attempt to interfere with or harm its soldiers while they are lawfully carrying out their duties,” the military stated.

In the end, the military police were escorted from the premises by police officers, without arresting the draft dodger.

The chairman of the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, Yitzhak Goldknopf, criticized the attempted arrest. “The scenes tonight are shocking and outrageous,” Goldknopf stated. “The persecution of Torah scholars has reached its peak,” he lamented.

Earlier on Monday, a video clip featuring inflammatory statements by Rabbi Dov Lando, one of the most influential rabbis in the ultra-Orthodox community, was published by Channel 12.

Footage from about 1.5 years ago showed Lando speaking to what appears to be a group of his aides about the Religious Zionist community, which combines a religiously observant lifestyle with work and military service, an approach rejected by the Haredi community.

Lando accused Zionism of making the “Arabs hate us” and said that if the United Nations were sovereign instead of Israel, “the situation would have been excellent.”

“It’s possible, without a state [of Israel], to live well with the Arabs… to live, to respect the Arabs. It was pretty good when the Arabs were in charge. It was the best situation,” Lando continued.

He said that Zionists “brought the physical disasters, not just the spiritual ones, to the Jewish people,” claiming that only the Haredi Torah study had prevented a situation where the Arabs “washed over all of Israel and destroyed everyone.”

According to Lando, religious Zionist soldiers are being killed during military service “because their rabbis teach them a distorted Torah,” while secular Israelis “have no connection to Judaism at all. It’s terrible.”

The airing of the comments, followed by the evening rioting, drew strong condemnation from opposition leaders, as well as from the leader of the People of Israel (Amcha Yisrael) party, Ofer Winter, who has criticized the government from a hawkish stance.

“What a disgrace! What a loss of control,” he said about the riot in Modi’in, noting that “not a single person in the coalition stood up to condemn this abomination.”

“You know who did condemn it? Goldknopf. And whom did he condemn? The IDF. An indescribable disgrace. You should be ashamed, and all those who remain silent should be ashamed.”

Former Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman of the Yisrael Beiteinu party noted that security forces had to retreat “under heavy police protection as though they were in Jenin, not Modiin.”

Gadi Eisenkot, whose Yashar party continues to lead most election polls, said: “Yesterday we heard vile remarks against those who serve, and tonight we saw crowds forcibly prevent the arrest of a deserter. These are not separate events. They are the same dangerous worldview that seeks to turn draft evasion into the norm and those who fulfill their duty to the state into suckers.”

“In the next government, we will pass a real conscription law that will strengthen the IDF and put an end to the reality in which some serve and some evade service,” he vowed.

Former prime minister and leader of the Together Party, Naftali Bennett, noted that Lando has a democratic right “to say that Arab rule is preferable to the State of Israel and to spit on the fallen of Religious Zionism. There's no point in arguing. But our right – and our duty – is simply to stop funding it. The Zionist public will stop funding anti-Zionist, anti-democratic, anti-IDF education. Not Zionist – not on my dime.”

Yair Golan, the former deputy IDF chief leading the far-left Democrats, called the government “a tangible danger to Israel’s security. While our soldiers are falling on the front, Netanyahu’s natural partners are disgracing the blood of our fallen; the Haredi militias have brought the police to its knees and demonstrated the magnitude of the disaster that draft evasion has brought upon us.”