Haredi draft

The silent majority of the Israeli public must step up and choose tikkun – the repair of society to make it better – and ensure that our heroic soldiers will not have died in vain.

Police have deemed the demonstration illegal and are on the scene directing traffic to alternative routes, clearing the road, and restoring public order.

How can a sane government allow a situation in which people travel thousands of miles to serve Israel while tens of thousands are paid not to serve their country?

Of the 42, 40 expressed willingness to enlist and were found fit for military service, while 2 were found to have dodged the draft for an extended period and were sent directly to a military prison.

"This is unacceptable. We need to preserve the world of Torah study because it has preserved us," the prime minister told Kol Barama during a Tuesday morning radio interview.

This systemic self-destructive behavior of Israeli governments, letting one group decide and legislate what is religiously (and therefore civically) acceptable, is the root of today's inequality.

The highway was reopened to traffic after about two hours of protests, which were sparked by the arrests of two IDF draft evaders over the weekend.

"Just as Abraham Lincoln observed that the government could not persist 'half slave and half free,' Israel cannot go on half theocratic and half secular," Kasparov, whose father was Jewish, said.

"Our situation is close to what it was in the Holocaust," Stark said. "And there's no other way to say it."

With two weeks to go, let’s hear how the parties are going to deal with education, transportation, the environment, the unequal IDF draft, the worrying wave of emigration, and the West Bank.