Some 200,000 ultra-Orthodox men blocked the entrance to Jerusalem on Thursday afternoon for a “million man” protest against military conscription. The gathering saw protesters attack journalists, and hundreds clashed with police as the event came to an end.

A 20-year-old man fell to his death from an unfinished high-rise building in the city center, where several ultra-Orthodox youths had gathered on several floors. Police later said they were investigating the death as a possible suicide.

The protest, billed as a prayer rally, was noted to be a rare show of unity among the various sects and streams of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community, which do not often mingle with one another, and amounted to one of the largest displays of power by the community in recent years.

It was contrasted by another ultra-Orthodox event in the city just hours earlier, when reservists of the IDF’s new Haredi brigade stood for a ceremony at the Western Wall after completing their training.

Despite the organizers’ intentions and the deployment of some 2,000 police officers throughout the city, portions of the roughly 200,000-strong crowd became rowdy, with some throwing water bottles and other objects at a female journalist live on air, and others harassing passersby in the streets.

Elsewhere, crowds of men set fire to pieces of tarpaulin, and the rally devolved into fierce clashes with police after efforts were made to disperse the demonstrators.

The event ended abruptly, after a group of Haredi youth and young men ascended a partially built high-rise building and nearby cranes in the center of Jerusalem, and one of the group, a 20-year-old, fell from the unfinished building.

Magen David Adom paramedics who rushed to the scene were forced to declare him dead and, along with police, removed his body from the construction site.

The fall victim was later identified by Hebrew media outlets as Menachem Mendel Litzman.

As word of his death spread, the rally organizers declared the event over and urged participants to disperse safely, even as more than a dozen youth remained at the top of the building under construction.

According to Channel 12, the group was instructed not to attempt to return to the ground until rescue forces arrived to bring them down safely.

The Israel Police said shortly after that it had opened an investigation into the circumstances of the man’s death. Later, police said they were probing the death as a possible suicide.

Other ultra-Orthodox youths also climbed a crane and onto the roof of a gas station to observe the rally.

עצרת המיליון בירושלים: מפגינים תועדו מטפסים על מנוף ועל גג תחנת דלק סמוך למוקד הפגנת החרדים@HGoldich pic.twitter.com/0WOP0GkL3f

— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) October 30, 2025

The protest was organized in response to the crackdown on ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, draft dodgers in recent months, during which time there have been over 870 arrests, amounting to just 7% of the 6,975 Haredi men who have been declared draft dodgers.

The fight over the conscription of military-aged men has become a point of contention over the last two years, ever since the clause in the Law for Security Service, which granted blanket military service exemptions for ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students, expired in June 2023. The following year, the High Court ruled that the government was therefore obligated to begin drafting them.

Despite the ruling, very few yeshiva students have enlisted since then, and the government has yet to pass a law regulating Haredi conscription,  fearing that doing so will lead to the collapse of the coalition due to fierce opposition from the two Haredi Knesset parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism.

But the Israel Defense Forces and the defense establishment have said that the military needs 12,000 additional combat soldiers, due to the country’s heightened security needs and the deaths and injuries to thousands of soldiers over the two years of war since the October 7, 2023, Hamas invasion and massacre.

While these issues have been raging on in the background over the past two years, and to varying degrees, for decades prior,........

© The Times of Israel