Victim named as Yosef Eisenthal, 14; preliminary police probe finds bus driver was attacked by rioters blocking the road before deadly incident, which occurred amid mass rally against IDF conscription
A teenage boy was killed and three others were injured on Tuesday after a bus drove into Haredi protesters, as tens of thousands attended an anti-conscription demonstration in Jerusalem.
The victim, who was dragged under the bus at an intersection in the city’s ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Romema, was identified as Yosef Eisenthal, 14, a resident of Jerusalem’s Ramot neighborhood.
Another three people, all teenagers, were lightly injured, medics said.
The bus driver was detained at the scene and police said a preliminary investigation found that he had been attacked by rioters who were blocking the road before the deadly incident.
The rally, which was the initiative of a group of leading ultra-Orthodox rabbis, opened with fiery speeches and descended into chaos as the evening wore on, with protesters setting several fires in the middle of the neighborhood’s Yirmiyahu Street, and blocking the intersection with Shamgar Street.
Authorities said the bus hit three protesters on Shamgar Street at around 9 p.m. before continuing for several hundred meters to Ohel Yehoshua Street, where it hit another pedestrian.
Graphic video from the scene showed the bus driving through the intersection, where protesters had lit a fire in the road, and person can be seen being dragged underneath the vehicle as bystanders scream.
A Times of Israel correspondent witnessed emergency responders attempting to extricate a person from under the bus on Ohel Yehoshua Street.
Witnesses who spoke to The Times of Israel at the scene of the ramming, only meters from a burning dumpster, reported that the young men had attempted to block traffic.
MDA Emergency Medical Technician Eli Eisenbach said the victim was “trapped under the bus” and declared dead at the scene.
The bus was a regular city bus operated by Extra, which runs routes between Haredi neighborhoods in the capital.
The bus driver was subsequently detained and taken for questioning to determine “the circumstances of the incident,” with police saying that he told investigators that he had been attacked by rioters during the rowdy protest.
“The Israel Police stresses that violent rioting, blocking traffic arteries and attacking vehicles cross a red line, endanger lives and could end in great tragedy,” said a police statement.
Hebrew media outlets reported that the driver had called the emergency police hotline to request help as protesters gathered around his bus, accosting him and preventing him from driving, which video first published by Channel 14 appeared to show.
The response from protesters at the scene initially appeared to be one of shock, although several resumed shouting at police officers, calling them “Nazis,” while others started, and then quickly stopped, singing anti-recruitment songs.
After the incident, the Israel Police said its forces were “working to disperse” the protesters, who it said had “thrown objects and eggs at police officers, set fire to bins, blocked vehicles and attacked journalists.”
Noting the matter was “under investigation,” the police added that journalists covering the protests were pelted with stones and taken to receive medical treatment.
Ultra-Orthodox lawmakers were quick to condemn the ramming and express sympathy for the victims, as were other politicians, from both the coalition and the opposition.
The Sephardi Shas party said in a statement that it was “shaken to the depths of our souls by the grave ramming incident in Jerusalem, in which a Haredi young man was run over and killed during a protest.”
“The horrific scenes of a bus driver wildly driving into a crowd of people, dragging a young man for dozens of meters, are chilling and deeply disturbing, and must not be met with silence,” the party said, calling for a “thorough and uncompromising investigation, and full justice for those responsible.”
“The blood of Haredi men is not cheap,” it added.
United Torah Judaism chairman Yitzhak Goldknopf similarly called on police to bring the driver to justice, and sent his wishes for the recovery of the wounded.
“I call on the Israel Police and law enforcement agencies to bring the driver to justice with the utmost severity, and to examine all avenues of investigation to ensure that justice is served,” said the chair of the Ashkenazi Haredi party. “Loss of control and har
Some lawmakers blamed the incident on what they said was incitement against the Haredi public, which is embroiled in an ongoing battle over mandatory military service, which its members have long sought to avoid.
“It is impossible to ignore the fact that more than once during demonstrations by the ultra-Orthodox public, there is a public atmosphere that it is permissible to harm the demonstrators,” said MK Meir Porush of UTJ’s Agudat Yisrael faction. ”
“The situation in which incitement is rampant against the ultra-Orthodox public is causing Jews to fear for their safety in the Land of Israel. I call on all public leaders to call for an end to the harm and incitement against the ultra-Orthodox public.”
Going one step further, his fellow Agudat Yisrael MK, Yisrael Eichler, blamed “incitement” by the press, judiciary, and legislators.
“The brutal murder tonight of a Haredi teenager dragged under a bus in Jerusalem is a direct result of wild and antisemitic incitement against the Haredim, in the media, the legal system and even in the Knesset,” the Hasidic lawmaker said.
“We have warned again and again that this incitement… will end in bloodshed. And now it has happened. I hope this is not just the beginning. We demand an immediate end to the wild incitement against the Haredim. Does blood need to be spilled in the streets so that the inciters… understand that words kill and that their hands are stained with the blood of the victims of the civil war they have declared?”
Other politicians who commented on the ramming refrained from accusing the bus driver of murder.
“Police updated me that all investigatory angles regarding the incident are being examined, and that they are treating the investigation with full severity,” said National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir in a statement.
President Isaac Herzog, meanwhile, said the “painful evening must be a wake-up call for all of us.”
“Now is the time to show responsibility, lower the flames, and do everything possible to prevent the next disaster before it is too late,” he said.
Protest organizers, in a statement on the incident, insisted that there had been no violence on the part of the protesters, and said that after the ramming, the rally was “dispersed quietly and in an organized way.”
In reality, however, young demonstrators continued to block the intersection of Shamgar and Yirmiyahu streets, and a fire they had set earlier in the night continued to burn.
In the middle of a busy shopping district, protesters burned dumpsters and flammable liquids at multiple locations. A loud boom, the origin of which could not be ascertained, was heard down the street.
Walking past a melting dumpster, a middle-aged Haredi man yelled at the youth standing around the fire, “Don’t enlist!”
‘Better to die than transgress’
The rally was the initiative of a group of leading ultra-Orthodox rabbis, including Rabbi Moshe Tzedakah, a member of Shas’s Council of Torah Sages, as well as rabbis representing, among others, the Slonim and Chernobyl Hasidic groups.
It was also connected to the Jerusalem Faction, an extremist ultra-Orthodox group numbering some 60,000 members, which is considered among the most conservative of Haredi factions and regularly demonstrates against the enlistment of yeshiva students.
The streets of Jerusalem were plastered with flyers against the government’s draft exemption bill — which many in the community believe does not do enough to absolve them of service — and the Shas party, which supports it.
Protesters carried signs saying one can either be Haredi or serve in the army, and calling Israel an apartheid state for its alleged mistreatment of the community.
Rabbis addressing the gathering said avoiding army service is a matter of life and death, priming cheers from the crowd and people perched on balconies and looking out windows.
Rabbi Ben Zion Mutzafi, 75, one of the top Sephardic Haredi spiritual leaders, complained that the government is jailing Torah students.
“Torah scholars are not for sale. Under no circumstances will yeshiva students be conscripted,” he said, arguing that even the “wicked gentiles” don’t conscript yeshiva students.
One speaker called conscription efforts “a holocaust” and an attempt to destroy the Jewish people. “Conscription to the army is destruction!” he screams.
Dozens of rabbis sat on an elevated dais before the crowd, gathered under a giant banner that decried the bill as a “decree of destruction” and stated, “Better to die than transgress.”
During the rally, hundreds of Haredim screamed at The Times of Israel’s reporter and others after they used smartphones to take pictures of the crowd from a scaffolding.
Multiple Haredim in the press area approached this correspondent afterward, insisting that using a smartphone is forbidden.
The crowd at the demonstration grew so large that it began to strain against the barricades separating it from the rabbis and media. People were pushed against the metal fences and begin climbing over with the help of others within the enclosure, prompting rabbis to call on the demonstrators to back up before a disaster ensues.
Protesters continued to overflow the barrier, filling the press area, leading to fights.
As reported by The Times of Israel