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Military Police forces raided the homes of students of haredi Hesder yeshivas in an attempt to arrest them on suspicion of being absent without leave from the IDF (AWOL).
These are students registered in an official Hesder track, but according to officials handling the matter, the IDF has not yet officially recognized their status, and therefore they were classified as AWOL.
According to a report on the haredi channel Lehathila, in several cases the students were sons of reservists. In one incident, Military Police soldiers broke into a home in the dead of night, in front of small children, while the father was serving in the Gaza Strip. The son was not at home at the time of the raid, as he was away in his yeshiva.
Military procedure stipulates that AWOLs cannot join the Hesder track, and must be drafted immediately. Following changes to the status of all yeshiva students, the head of the Manpower Planning Brigade ordered leniency and the forwarding of requests to an exceptions committee, but according to field sources, since February — when the Hesder documents were forwarded — no progress has been made.
Sources familiar with the details directed blame at the new head of the Birgade, accusing her of dragging her feet and leaving the students without an official status.
The amnesty operation for AWOLs, where the IDF offered to drop all charges and penalties if they returned to service, also did not resolve the issue. The students received a demand to enlist immediately, but claimed they were already in a Hesder track with a prearranged future enlistment date. Now, the IDF has chosen to launch an enforcement operation to arrest them.
Journalist Yanki Farber commented on the matter: “The commander of the Military Police is a brigadier general and he has the power to do things right, no less than any other party in the IDF that is trying to recruit haredim and integrate them properly. That brigadier general hardly ever makes arrests of AWOLs. The arrests you see are lip service, but suddenly it is urgent for him to arrest Hesder students who in any case will be drafted. Stop sabotaging the integration attempts by targeting haredi young men who are already in recruitment tracks through Hesder yeshivas; start doing things right.”
Haredi soldier Ari Kroizer, who served until recently, also wrote, “The procrastination in the Manpower Directorate has greatly harmed haredi Hesder yeshivas. Yeshiva heads have encountered difficulties absorbing young men who had already been downgraded from yeshiva student status. And now we are facing arrests. What a pity, this is not the way. Do not destroy what works. Do not destroy the last hope.”
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