Senior leaders of the ultra-Orthodox community are considering holding demonstrations outside of Israeli embassies worldwide in order to protest the arrest of Haredi draft evaders in Israel by the military police, a source with knowledge of the senior rabbis’ thinking told the Times of Israel on Saturday.

The escalating protest within the Haredi community against Israel’s efforts to draft its eligible men into the military comes amid an IDF crackdown on draft dodgers and as the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee prepares to meet next week to discuss passing a law regulating ultra-Orthodox enlistment.

Along with potential global protests, ultra-Orthodox rabbis are also considering holding a massive “prayer rally” in Israel “at some point soon,” the source told ToI.

The source dismissed, however, a Channel 12 report from Friday claiming that Rabbi Dov Lando, one of the most prominent rabbinic leaders of the so-called “Lithuanian” stream of ultra-Orthodoxy, was promoting an economic boycott of Israel.

The network had reported that Lando, who serves as the spiritual leader of the Degel HaTorah faction in the United Torah Judaism party, had reached out to representatives of the hardline anti-Zionist Eda Haredit group to propose what it called “a coordinated Haredi move to withdraw financial investments from Israel.”

But, the source said, such ideas are “less relevant because you need a lot of businesspeople for that, and that’s also too drastic a step. In contrast, the source asserted, “Rallies and demonstrations in front of embassies make sense.”

Despite the source’s denial, a spokesman for Rabbi Lando said in response to a query about the Channel 12 report that “everything is on the table.”

Lando himself will be the one to make the final decision on the matter, the spokesman said.

While possible plans to protest Haredi conscription at Israeli embassies around the world have yet to materialize, demonstrations in Israel have been in full swing and continued on Saturday night, when some 200 members of the Boyan and Gur Hasidic groups descended on the Beit Lid military prison.

Army Radio reported that the protest was led by the extremist Jerusalem Faction, which for years has held regular demonstrations against the conscription of yeshiva students.

The protesters, according to Haredi journalist Moshe Weisberg, were instructed by their spiritual leader to rally outside the military facility in protest of “the arrest of yeshiva students for the ‘crime’ of Torah study.”

A video shared by Army Radio showed the group of protesters shouting the names of the arrested draft evaders outside the militaרט and promising, “All of us are with you.”

The protesters also prayed together outside the prison.

Lando himself visited the prison on Thursday to offer support to the detained Haredi draft dodgers and told them that their entire community stands behind them.

For the past year, the Haredi leadership, including Lando, has rejected any attempt to find a compromise to draft at least some of the ultra-Orthodox youth to the military, after last year the High Court ruled that the decades-long blanket exemptions from army duty traditionally afforded to the Haredi community were illegal.

Some 80,000 ultra-Orthodox men aged between 18 and 24 are currently believed to be eligible for military service, but have not enlisted. The Israel Defense Forces has said it urgently needs 12,000 recruits, due to the strain on standing and reserve forces amid the ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza and other military challenges. Overall, around 2,700 Haredim in total joined the army over the past year.

And while the IDF has significantly stepped up its efforts to recruit the eligible Haredi men, sending out 54,000 conscription orders in July alone,  the Attorney General’s Office told the High Court of Justice last week that the government was dragging its feet.

The government’s failure to pass a bill regulating conscription is the result of pressure from the Haredi United Torah Judaism and Shas parties, which have been pushing hard for the passage of legislation that will enable most ultra-Orthodox males to continue avoiding military conscription or any form of national service.

Last month, UTJ quit the coalition after being presented with a copy of a proposed enlistment bill prepared by then-Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman, Yuli Edelstein, which it argued had violated the terms of a supposed compromise reached in June. They were quickly followed by Shas, which, while quitting the government, has remained part of the coalition.

To mollify the Haredim, the coalition on Monday replaced Edelstein with fellow Likud MK Boaz Bismuth, who has said he will hold meetings with both reservists and ultra-Orthodox representatives.

Ahead of the first committee meeting under his leadership, Bismuth wrote on X on Saturday evening that he would approach his new role “with a genuine commitment to cooperation and national responsibility,” and called for both the coalition and the opposition “to rise to the occasion as well.”

“Together, with mutual respect and belief in the eternity of Israel, we will embark on a new path,” he declared, sharing a video featuring footage of Israeli troops, Haredim praying at the Western Wall, and members of the IDF’s new ultra-Orthodox battalion.

In the video’s voiceover, taken from remarks he made in the Knesset last week, Bismuth can be heard saying that the current war in Gaza, now in its 22nd month, requires both the coalition and the opposition “to rise to the occasion, join hands and act for the people and the country.”

Israelis must “find the balance,” he said, between tradition and Torah study, on the one hand, and military service, on the other, “to reach a historic solution.”

Edelstein, who was replaced by Bismuth to mollify the Haredim, planned to pass a bill that would have imposed harsh sanctions on draft evaders, including the revocation of drivers’ licenses, a ban on flying abroad, a prohibition on applying for civil service jobs, an end to government subsidies for purchasing an apartment, and cancellation of discounts on public transportation, National Insurance payments, and electricity bills.

But Bismuth, according to the Ynet news site, intends to submit a new draft of the bill within weeks and will hold discussions on it during the current Knesset recess so as to advance it as fast as possible when the parliament reconvenes in October.

To that end, members of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee were informed last week that they would meet to discuss advancing the government’s controversial enlistment legislation on Tuesday, in preparation for the second and third readings necessary for it to pass into law.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.