Ultra-Orthodox Jews block main junction in Jerusalem

Israeli police used water cannon to disperse a protest by ultra-orthodox Jews who had blocked a main junction in Jerusalem on Tuesday. According to media reports, the protest took place against the arrest of a Jewish man who refused to appear at a military recruitment centre.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews have for years been exempt from service, and they claim the military will expose their youth to secularism.Draft privileges go back to when Israel's founders granted exemptions to a few hundred gifted students to help rebuild the schools of Jewish learning destroyed in the Holocaust. But the numbers have ballooned dramatically since then.