Furious protesters are denouncing Israeli security forces as “Nazis” – but this is not a scene from a pro-Palestinian rally on the streets of London or Paris. This clash is in the heart of Israel, in which hundreds of ultra-Orthodox men in white shirts, black fedoras and long black frock coats face off against the military police.
The flashpoint is a building in the city of Modi’in, midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, where a young ultra-Orthodox Jewish (or Haredi) man lives. The police have come to arrest him after he failed to report for military service.
The clash in early October, seen by the BBC in a video, is one of many in recent months in which one of the deepest schisms in Israeli society has become ever more exposed.
This widening fault line is playing out against the backdrop of the wars Israel is currently fighting, including the unresolved conflict against Hamas in Gaza – as well as increasing violence by extremist settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
Once a tiny minority, the ultra-Orthodox remain a group apart even as their numbers expand year by year. Currently, they are estimated to make up about 14% of the population, and the birth rate within the community remains far higher than among other Israelis. If their numbers continue to grow at a similar rate, they could make up one-third of the Jewish Israeli population by 2050.
As the ultra-Orthodox community becomes bigger, so has the debate around the expense of supporting them with stipends so they can devote themselves to full-time religious study. Subsidies to the group are estimated to cost the government 35bn shekels (£8.4bn) per year and, until recently, they were exempted from military service.
Now they’re no longer an insignificant minority, they’re facing pressure to engage more with wider Israeli society.
