Haredi soldiers and recruiters are receiving threatening messages from extremists within their own community, victims revealed to the Israeli press on Thursday, as part of an ongoing incitement and hatred campaign against the IDF’s religious staff.
Victims have received such insults as “Israel hater,” “burner of souls,” and been told to check into mental health facilities.
Recordings of the calls aired on Walla! News on Thursday night, shortly after the outlet also revealed that booklets had been published with soldiers’ names, photos, and personal details.
“Let us live as Jews – do not dare to recruit men to the IDF,” one of the extremists states in the recording to a haredi IDF recruiter. “Shame on you. You’re a disgrace.”
“Don’t you dare touch the soul of a Jew,” he continued. “You’re causing the masses to sin.”
Several recruiters told the outlet that they had received a never-ending stream of hate calls from private numbers in recent days since they distributed their information within the haredi community.
In another recording, an extremist calls one recruiter a sheigitz, a Yiddish pejorative for Gentiles, and claimed that the recruiter’s soul would have to stand judgement for his actions on Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year.
And in yet another recording, a haredi extremist with a false Arabic accent threatens to find a recruiter and attack him at home, calling him a “dog” and stating, “if you’re Jews, we’re ISIS.” He then spit out the phrase Itbach Al-Yahud, the Arabic term for “Death to the Jews.”
It is the latest in a spate of similar incidents of violence and intimidation against religious IDF soldiers by haredi extremists.
In April, a religious IDF officer was attacked in Jerusalem’s Meah Shearim neighborhood by haredi extremists who pelted his car with rocks.
Last year, extremists launched a highly offensive poster campaignportraying haredi soldiers as pigs. The campaign was provocatively timed to follow Operation Protective Edge, in which dozens of IDF soldiers – including many religious troops – lost their lives fighting Islamist terrorists in Gaza. The Hamas terrorist organization gleefully used the cartoon in some of its own propaganda.
That campaign was launched again in April of this year, with offensive leaflets posted to the homes of residents in Hadera.
