An estimated 20,000 anti-Zionist Jews gathered in New York on Sunday to protest against Israel’s conscription laws.

The protesters, from the Satmar Chasidic sect, filled the Barclays Centre in Brooklyn; the rally was for men and boys only, and was conducted almost entirely in Yiddish.

Promoted with the slogan “Let my people go”, the gathering was intended to express solidarity with Charedi yeshiva students in Israel, an increasing number of whom are now being considered liable for conscription into the Israeli Defence Force.

Speaking to Ha’aretz, Rabbi Moshe David Niederman, head of Satmar’s Central Rabbinical Congress, said that the Israeli government was “enticing” strictly Orthodox men to join the army.

“They are using every trick in the book,” he said.

“They are spending hundreds and thousands of shekalim to have people go in who are religious, on payroll, to promise the world for those who are going to enlist - jobs and so on.”

He told the Israeli paper that the rally had been organised “to tell our brethren ‘we are behind you and we will do whatever is in our power - and we have a major power.’”

There has been a growing tension within Israel between the secular and strictly Orthodox communities over the issue of conscription. Some among the strictly Orthodox believe that their Torah study protects the people of Israel spiritually, and therefore is just as important a measure as protecting the state physically. 

Others, such as Satmar, are extremely suspicious of the exposure to the outside world that service in the army brings, believing it has the potential to entice young men away from Orthodoxy – and that the government deliberately uses the army as a secularising tool. 

Meanwhile, secular Israelis are frustrated by what they see as the unwillingness of the Charedim to do their fair share in protecting the country in which they live.

There have been a number of clashes in strictly Orthodox neighbourhoods between draft protesters and the police, something emphasised at the Satmar rally. A video was screened of Israeli police beating Charedi protesters in the Meah Shearim, Jerusalem.

“We are here, starting this campaign and making sure that the world knows that unfortunately Orthodox Jews are being persecuted because of their religious beliefs,” Rabbi Niederman told the Jerusalem Post.

“This harassment of freedom of religion, freedom of assembly and speech must stop. We demand this from other countries, so we definitely demand it from a country that calls itself the Jewish state.”