Rabbi Dov Lando Visits Draft Dodgers in Prison ..But Never Went to be "Menacham Avel" Parents of Murdered Soldiers

 

Did I miss the video of the venerable Rosh yeshivah being menachem avel any family whose son or husband was killed in the war? Even once?

 I’m sure his ahavas yisrael extends beyond the chareidi camp, right?

 Please tell me I’m wrong. Perhaps his yeshivah keeps a list of the injured on the bima that they say tehillim for. I dont know. Please disabuse me of my erroneous presumptions.

Prominent Haredi leader Rabbi Dov Lando, spiritual head of Degel HaTorah and a key figure in the Lithuanian ultra-Orthodox community, visited brothers Rafael and Baruch Yitzhakov at the military prison in Beit Lid. The brothers, yeshiva students from Tel Aviv, were arrested after failing to report to the draft office.

Rabbi Lando, 94, was escorted into the family visit section, as shown in a video released by his office. His visit underscores the Haredi leadership’s ongoing stance encouraging yeshiva students to ignore military draft orders.

The brothers’ arrest on Wednesday prompted Rabbi Lando’s office to declare that Israel had “declared war on yeshiva students.” Approximately 80,000 ultra-Orthodox men aged 18 to 24 remain eligible for service but have not enlisted, despite a High Court ruling last year that invalidated decades of blanket draft exemptions for the Haredi community.

For the past year, Haredi leaders have attempted to promote legislation which would establish the status of yeshiva students as exempt from draft, but Likud leaders have consistently demanded sanctions be applied even to yeshiva students who are not drafted. The new head of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Boaz Bismuth, will try and reopen the negotiations in order to formulate a law which could be acceptable to the charedi public but will still raise draft levels.