Israel ultra-Orthodox vow to push back after students' arrest
The exemption of many ultra-Orthodox men from the military service performed by other Jews has long been a contentious issue in Israel but it has become more so as the Gaza war has dragged on, putting a strain on army reservists.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government has depended on the support of ultra-Orthodox parties for its majority in parliament.
But its failure to pass new legislation to give full-time seminary students continued exemption from military service has tested that support.
Both of the two main parties representing ultra-Orthodox of European descent have withdrawn their ministers from the government, while one has also stopped supporting it in parliament.
The ultra-Orthodox community represents 14 percent of Israel's Jewish population, about 1.3 million people, and around 66,000 men of military age previously benefited each year from exemptions.
The Israeli army announced in early July that tens of thousands of conscription orders would be sent out to ultra-Orthodox Jews.
Earlier this week, authorities arrested two brothers, both full-time seminary students, after they failed to heed their call-up papers.
© 2025 AFP
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France 24
2 hours ago
- France 24
UN, EU, media groups condemn Israeli strike that killed Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza
Condemnations poured in from the United Nations, the EU and media rights groups Monday after an Israeli strike killed an Al Jazeera news team in Gaza, as Palestinians mourned the journalists and Israel accused one of them of being a Hamas militant. Dozens of Gazans stood amid bombed-out buildings in the courtyard of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City to pay their respects to Anas al-Sharif, a prominent Al Jazeera correspondent aged 28, and four of his colleagues killed on Sunday. Hospital director Mohammed Abu Salmiya said a sixth journalist, freelance reporter Mohammed Al-Khaldi, was killed in the strike that targeted the Al Jazeera team. Mourners including men wearing blue journalists' flak jackets carried their bodies, wrapped in white shrouds with their faces exposed, through narrow alleys to their graves. Israel confirmed it had targeted Sharif, whom it labelled a "terrorist" affiliated with Hamas, alleging he "posed as a journalist". Al Jazeera said four other employees -- correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh, and cameramen Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa -- were killed when the strike hit a tent set up for journalists outside the main gate of Al-Shifa. An Israeli military statement accused Sharif of heading a Hamas "terrorist cell" and being "responsible for advancing rocket attacks" against Israelis. The military released documents alleging to show the date of Sharif's enlistment with Hamas in 2013, an injury report from 2017 and the name of his military unit and rank. According to local journalists who knew him, Sharif had worked at the start of his career with a Hamas communication office, where his role was to publicise events organised by the group that has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2006. Sharif was one of Al Jazeera's most recognisable faces working in Gaza, providing daily reports on the now 22-month-old war. Media freedom groups have condemned the Israeli strike on journalists, which the UN human rights agency called a "grave breach of international humanitarian law". The European Union 's foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Monday that "the EU condemns the killing of five Al Jazeera journalists." - 'Attempt to silence' - A posthumous message, written by Sharif in April in case of his death, was published online saying he had been silenced and urging people "not to forget Gaza". In July, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called for his protection following online posts by an Israeli military spokesman. The group had accused Israel of a "pattern" of labelling journalists militants "without providing credible evidence", and said the military had levelled similar accusations against media workers in Gaza including Al Jazeera staff. "International law is clear that active combatants are the only justified targets in a war setting," Jodie Ginsberg, CPJ's chief executive, told AFP. Unless Israel "can demonstrate that Anas al-Sharif was still an active combatant, then there is no justification for his killing." Al Jazeera called the attack "a desperate attempt to silence voices exposing the Israeli occupation", and described Sharif as "one of Gaza's bravest journalists". The Qatari broadcaster also said the strike followed "repeated incitement" and calls by Israeli officials to target Sharif and his colleagues. Reporters Without Borders says nearly 200 journalists have been killed in the war, which was sparked by Hamas's deadly October 2023 attack on Israel. Israel prevents international reporters from entering Gaza, except on occasional tightly controlled trips with the military. The strike on the news team in Gaza City came days after the Israeli security cabinet approved plans to send troops into the area, a decision met with mounting domestic and international criticism. - 'Another calamity' - Netanyahu on Sunday said the military will conquer the remaining quarter or so of the territory not yet controlled by Israeli troops -- including much of Gaza City and Al-Mawasi, an Israeli-designated safe zone where huge numbers of Palestinians have sought refuge. The plan, which Israeli media reported had triggered bitter disagreement between the government and military leadership, drew condemnation from protesters in Israel and numerous countries, including Israeli allies. Notably Germany, a major weapons supplier and staunch ally, announced the suspension of shipments of any arms that could be used in Gaza. Australia said it would join a growing list of Western nations in recognising a Palestinian state. Netanyahu has remained defiant, telling journalists Sunday that "we will win the war, with or without the support of others." The United Nations and humanitarian agencies have condemned the planned offensive, which UN Assistant Secretary-General Miroslav Jenca said "will likely trigger another calamity in Gaza". UN agencies warned last month that famine was unfolding in the territory, with Israel severely restricting aid entry. Israel's offensive has killed at least 61,499 Palestinians, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, figures the United Nations says are reliable. Hamas's 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
France 24
13 hours ago
- France 24
Why Australia is risking US anger to recognise the state of Palestine
Australia will add its voice to a growing chorus of Western nations that will formally recognise a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly in September. Coming on the heels of similar declarations from France and Canada, as well as the conditional recognition floated by the UK, centre-left Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's announcement on Monday may not have come as much of a surprise. But while a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict has enjoyed bipartisan support from Albanese's Labor Party and the right-wing Liberal-National Coalition for decades, both sides have insisted that any such recognition come at the end of an eventual peace process – a caveat that has kept any party from pushing for the recognition of a Palestinian state for some 77 years. 'A two-state solution is humanity's best hope to break the cycle of violence in the Middle East and to bring an end to the conflict, suffering and starvation in Gaza,' Albanese said in his announcement. 'The situation in Gaza has gone beyond the world's worst fears,' he said. 'The Israeli government continues to defy international law and deny sufficient aid, food and water to desperate people, including children.' Read moreNearly 12,000 children under five face acute malnutrition in Gaza, WHO says More than 2 million people in Gaza are facing famine due to Israel's deliberate withholding of much-needed humanitarian aid, according to UN agencies. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week announced a renewed military offensive in the devastated Palestinian territory to seize control of Gaza City. More than 61,000 Palestinians have already been killed by Israel's military onslaught in Gaza since the deadly Hamas-led attacks on October 7, 2023. For a country that has for decades marched in lockstep with US foreign policy in the Middle East, the decision could leave Australia out of favour with its closest security partner. The US also remains Israel's staunchest military and political backer, and the administration of President Donald Trump has repeatedly accused countries that have recognised a Palestinian state of 'rewarding Hamas' for the militant group's attacks on Israel. Albanese said that he has assurances from the Palestinian Authority that Hamas will play no role in any eventual state. Conservative opposition leader Sussan Ley was quick to slam the announcement, saying the decision 'puts Australia at odds with the United States of America, our most important ally, and the most consequential player in the conflict in Gaza'. Martin Kear, a sessional lecturer at the University of Sydney's Department of Government and International Relations and the author of 'Hamas and Palestine: The Contested Road to Statehood', spoke to FRANCE 24 about some of the reasons why the Australian government has joined the growing number of Western countries formally recognising a Palestinian state. FRANCE 24: Albanese comes from Labor's left faction and co-founded the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine very early on in his political career. But how has the Labor Party positioned itself on the Israel-Palestine question under his government? From the very beginning, there's always been factional support within the Australian Labor Party for recognising a Palestinian state that existed even before the October [2023] attacks. The government has kept a fairly steady diplomatic line – in line with a lot of other states, most other democratic states – in support of Israel. But obviously, as the war has dragged on, and there's been more and more evidence of systematic human rights abuses – the International Criminal Court investigations, the International Court of Justice investigations and what we're seeing on the television each night, particularly of emaciated children – I think there was a groundswell of support, not just within Australia but within the international community, that things needed to change. And extra levers of pressure placed on Israel to not only stop the war, but to recognise the validity of the two-state solution. Now, I would say that there's been a bit of commentary in Australia about the government moving away from the position of the US, and while I think that's certainly valid, it's not unusual for Labor governments to strike a particularly independent foreign policy that, while it doesn't run contrary to the United States, certainly differs in some areas from the United States … . [Previous Labor governments have been] supportive of the United States when [they] wanted to support the United States, but took differing views when [they] needed to. So that's very much in line with what this government is doing here – it's saying, 'These are Australian positions, we're not disagreeing with the United States, we're simply taking a different point of view on this particular issue.' Whereas previous conservative governments would be more in line with keeping tightly within the foreign policy confines of the United States. 'Genocide': Unless West forces Israel to change course, 'ethnic cleansing in Gaza will persist' To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement. Accept Manage my choices One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading. To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site. Try again © France 24 07:50 We're seeing a more unpredictable US foreign policy, both towards traditional US adversaries but especially towards US allies. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have been critical of France's decision to recognise a Palestinian state. What potential repercussions do you foresee for Australia charting an independent course in the face of the perhaps more belligerent approach that we've seen from the Trump administration so far? There are positives and negatives with that. Because President Trump takes a very different view – he's not beholden to traditional diplomatic norms, he reads the situation probably differently to most other presidents in our lifetime. So while that unpredictability can be a source of tension, I also think it creates an opportunity for other states to say, 'OK, we can chart a different course from the United States, because someone's got to actually step up and do something.' And I do wonder to what extent one of the things influencing the leadership of the states of France and Britain, Canada, Australia, potentially New Zealand, is the domestic political pressure on governments to do something and not just simply wait for the United States to do something or not do something. There are many things they're trying to do with this recognition, but I think the unpredictability of the United States of the Trump administration creates an opportunity for these states to take a more direct diplomatic response than they might have otherwise done with some other president. Could you expand on the ways in which that domestic pressure has evolved since the Hamas-led October 7 attacks? In the immediate aftermath, Albanese took a very disapproving line on demonstrations in solidarity with the people of Gaza. How has that persistent popular mobilisation, and the more passive sense of disapproval towards Israel's campaign in Gaza, changed over the years, and to what extent do you think it has influenced the government's decision? It's really difficult to tell to what degree it influenced the decision. There have been regular protests, weekly protests in Sydney, for example, of people protesting the excesses of Israel. As we started getting more and more information about what Israel was doing, there was more and more disquiet amongst the community about the excesses, and really the unwillingness of democratic leaders to openly criticise or do anything substantive to another member of the club. Recently we had the Australian federal election and while that election actually turned out to be a landslide in favour of the Labor party, in the lead-up to that election there was a lot of commentary about seats held by key ministers of the Albanese government that may have been at threat because they held large Muslim communities, large Arab communities, and whether those people would vote for independents, because there are quite a few independents that ran in those seats against these ministers. To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement. Accept Manage my choices One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading. To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site. Try again © France 24 06:09 I'm not privy to the polling that the party was doing, but certainly there was a lot of media commentary about the effect that the government's lack of response to the excesses of what was happening in Gaza may have on the government. That was also alongside this fairly strong movement within the Australian Labor Party that has long been advocating for the recognition of Palestine as a way of pushing forward the two-state solution. To get some sort of movement, because it's essentially been dead – the negotiation process around that has been dead since 2014, maybe even earlier. I think [former US president Barack] Obama might have been the last one who dipped his toe into that particular morass, and that failed again. There's lots of little individual contributing factors, and I think the government just having a sense of moral outrage at what was actually happening – the nightly visions of emaciated children turned out to be the straw that broke the camel's back. Though there have been media reports here saying the move has been diplomatically in line probably since the start of this year. So, obviously, there's been disquiet within the government about what's happening – and their unwillingness to openly and publicly express that disquiet has been a cause of frustration for people. To what extent do you see this decision as being shaped by a sense of strength in numbers? French President Emmanuel Macron tried very publicly to encourage other Western democracies to recognise a Palestinian state. Very much so. France is one of the leading countries in the EU. Germany, certainly under this chancellorship, has been quiescent and unwilling – and I understand that – to really take a forceful view. And they've been overly supportive of Israel, not just diplomatically, but monetarily and militarily, whereas France has very much taken the opposite [stance]. It's taken a far more independent line and a far more critical line [on] Israel for longer. [France is] a key member of the EU that sits on the UN Security Council along with the UK – so there's lots of diplomatic cover, and strength in numbers. And perhaps the diplomatic moves from the beginning of this year were getting as many democratic states as possible in line. Now we've got France, Canada, Australia, potentially New Zealand, and maybe even the UK moving towards recognition of Palestine. I have my doubts about whether the UK will actually do it, simply because of domestic politics in Britain and the politics within the Labour Party in Britain. Jeremy Corbyn – one of the reasons he was ousted was because he was perceived to be anti-Semitic. And that anti-Semitism was basically his strident support of the Palestinian state. So there's a question mark over Britain, but certainly I think there's a strength in numbers and a shoring up of numbers, and so there's some sort of coordinated effort ... some sort of momentum, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if the United States has been kept in the loop throughout this. I don't think any of this has really caught the Trump administration by surprise. REPLAY - Netanyahu defends his planned military offensive in Gaza before world press To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement. Accept Manage my choices One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading. To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site. Try again © France 24 16:53 So everyone's been kept in the loop, and perhaps Trump is just keeping his powder dry and seeing what happens, seeing the winds of fate and seeing what's in it for him. Because he's a very transactional politician, so I think if he sees there's domestic advantages, he may make a move or may start putting additional pressure on Netanyahu – because I don't think there's any love lost between the two. It's a very big step for Australia and the other states to actually come out and say 'we're recognising Palestine' and everything that goes along with that, like pushing this matter forward. Let's see what can happen in terms of a reformation of the Palestinian Authority, whether there are new elections. So there are some potential positives. But I just wonder how much will actually be done, particularly when Israel will do everything in its power to ruin whatever plans they have. You've talked about the domestic pressures that the Labor Party has been facing. Taking a more cynical view, to what extent could we read this decision to formally recognise a Palestinian state as part of an effort to defuse those critiques that Albanese's government has been too slow to admit what Israel has been doing in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, without necessarily changing anything on the ground? What percentage of the pie that mitigation makes up – who knows? But I certainly think that's one of the calculations. Because in those states that are going to be recognising Palestine, there's a lot of domestic discontent. I suspect it's the same in France, with a large Muslim community. There's certainly dissent in Britain – there's reports on the news tonight that 500 people were arrested because they were protesting under the banner of Palestine Action (an activist group the UK proscribed as a terrorist organisation for having sprayed red paint in the engines of Royal Air Force planes to protest Britain's military support of Israel). Over 100,000 people marched [last week] over the Sydney Harbour Bridge in support of the Palestinians. So this is a way of governments saying, 'We understand your distress, we're responding to that.' But what happens next? Because from my personal perspective, the two-state solution died in June 1967 when Israel captured East Jerusalem, because Palestinians won't consider a state without East Jerusalem as its capital and Israel will never relinquish control of East Jerusalem. So what are we actually talking about, at the end of the day? When Albanese talks about having assurances from the Palestinian Authority that there will be a demilitarised state with Hamas having no role in it, it does seem difficult to imagine what that process looks like. We need to make Hamas a part of the solution rather than part of the problem. Because if they're part of the problem, they're outside the tent pissing in – excuse my language – and if we make them part of the solution, then Palestinians will see any elections as being legitimate. If Hamas are excluded, they simply won't. And we run a very great risk of repeating the mistakes of Iraq and Afghanistan. Hamas is still popular – it's more popular than Fatah. So we need to respect the Palestinian view. Now, if Hamas participates in elections and Palestinians don't vote for them, then that's a fair bump – play on. But I think in any elections there that Hamas participates in – and that's another question in and of itself – then I don't think Fatah wins. But that's crystal balling.
France 24
15 hours ago
- France 24
Macron slams Israel's Gaza plan as path to 'permanent war', urges UN-backed stabilisation mission
Macron on Monday condemned Israel's plan to expand its operations and take control of Gaza City as a disaster waiting to happen and proposed an international coalition under a United Nations mandate to stabilise Gaza. "This war must end now with a permanent ceasefire," Macron said in a statement, adding Israel 's plan to take control of Gaza City was "a disaster of unprecedented gravity and a headlong rush into permanent war." Last week, Israel's security cabinet approved a plan to take control of Gaza City, in a move that expanded its military operations in the shattered Palestinian territory and drew strong criticism at home and abroad. "The Israeli cabinet's announcement of an expansion of its operations in Gaza City and the Mawasi camps and for a re-occupation heralds a disaster of unprecedented gravity waiting to happen and of a drift towards a never-ending war," said Macron. "Israeli hostages and the people of Gaza will continue to be the primary victims of this strategy," Macron said. 01:46 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 's office did not immediately return a request for comment. Responding to international criticism in a press conference on Sunday, he said Israel is "applying force judiciously". "Israel has no choice but to finish the job and complete the defeat of Hamas," Netanyahu added. "We have about 70 to 75 percent of Gaza under Israeli control, military control, but we have two remaining strongholds, OK? These are Gaza City and the central camps in Al Mawasi." In his statement, Macron said it was important to establish a UN-mandated stabilisation mission to secure the Gaza Strip. "The Security Council must now work to establish this mission and give it a mandate," he said. "I have asked my teams to work on this without delay with our partners." By proposing a UN-mandated mission in Gaza, Macron is seeking to build on the momentum created by his recognition of a Palestinian state last month, which set off a domino of recognitions, with Britain and Canada following suit. Macron said the UN mission would be tasked with securing the Gaza Strip, protecting civilians and working in support of unspecified Palestinian governance.
