Haredi group: Resist draft with all your soul

A new organization operating under the name “Fortress – the center for protection from draft issues," has issued an instructional booklet pledging assistance to young haredim who receive orders to appear at IDF recruitment centers, and providing counsel on how to get out of it.

The 32-page guide opens with the declaration, "The unbearable acts are before us in full intensity.” The texts of the guide are in line with statements made by haredi rabbis since the elections, who say that their followers should fight until Zionism is defeated, calling it a cruel, collapsing movement.

Comparisons between the haredi draft and the Holocaust appear within the guides in detail. Among other things, the booklet discusses the obligation for total sacrifice. It provides several examples from history. Among them is the story of 93 girls at “Beit Yaacov” in Krakow, Poland, who committed suicide in 1942 by ingesting poison, when they heard Nazi soldiers were coming to rape them.

“We must learn from previous generations about the pride and intensity with which they gave their souls for the sanctification of Hashem (God),” the guide states.

Another section recalls the czars of Russia, who forcibly drafted Jewish children into their armies and converted some to Christianity.

They also mention the tortures of the Inquisition, and the work camps of Siberia appear on the same line with the discussion of the draft into the IDF. The bottom line? Readers are instructed to fight with all their soul and not join the military.

“And if we ever get to the point where they put a choice before us to do one of the three transgressions, or to be killed, we will choose death, and not a life of betrayal to the blessed lord,” the guide states.

According to tradition, one should choose death and not commit incest, spill blood, or worship idols, and the guide explains why induction into the IDF is on par with these transgressions.

At the end of the guide, an emergency telephone number appears for those receiving induction notices, as well as a "Tip Line" for reporting “the boy or yeshiva student who has joined the army, or is tempted to do so.”