Another central passage is a paraphrase of the Ten Commandments (5:6-21). Differences between the original formulation and the one we read this Sabbath constitute fertile ground for interpretation and commentary. This week, we read about the universal meaning of the commandments: “Observe them faithfully, for that will be proof of your wisdom and discernment to other peoples, who on hearing of all these laws will say, ‘Surely, that great nation is a wise and discerning people’” (4:6). This highlights a crucial obligation bestowed on the Jews with respect to the rest of humanity: to be “a kingdom of priests and a holy people” (Exodus 19:6). There is nothing genetic or innate in this; only proper values and behavior would be valued by others.

Conversely, those Jews who violate these values would be abhorred by non-Jews and Jews alike. These violations are particularly grievous if they occur in the Land of Holiness, which is the proper translation of ארץ הקודש, usually referred to as “the Holy Land.” There are degrees of holiness: Jerusalem has more of it, and the Temple Mount (or Haram Al-Sharif in Arabic) is endowed with even more (Mishnah Kelim, ch. 1). This is why halacha, Jewish legal tradition, forbids Jews to ascend the Temple Mount. While a place of holiness does not make humans holy, humans may indeed desecrate it, including the Land of Holiness.

Yet, some Israeli politicians make a point of ascending the Temple Mount; this is how Ariel Sharon provoked the Second Intifada in 2000. While Sharon was not an observant Jew, those who do it nowadays observe Jewish rituals and are graduates of religious schools. They have been roundly denounced by those who remain loyal to traditional Judaism, especially because such provocative acts often lead to bloodshed. Jewish tradition affirms that the First Temple was destroyed because of three transgressions committed by the Israelites, one of them being bloodshed.

One may wonder how outwardly religious Jews can engage in such explicitly forbidden acts. What explains this is that they follow a religion that is “new and improved”; they call it דתי לאמי, National Judaism. It combines traditional practices with a commitment to Zionism, even though our weekly reading reminds us: “You shall have no other gods beside Me” (5:7). Followers of the new religion have transformed this political movement, developed mostly by atheists and agnostics, into a religious belief, overriding quite a few fundamental commandments, including “You shall not murder” (5:17), repeated in this week’s reading. Talmudic rabbis give a sharp definition of such behavior: כל ת”ח שאין בו דעת נבלה טובה הימנו, “any Torah scholar who has not internalized what he learns is worse than a carcass” (Vayikra Rabbah 1:15).

According to Jewish tradition, bloodshed led not only to the destruction of the temple built by King Solomon but also to the first exile. Moreover, this outcome is made explicit in this week’s reading: “I call heaven and earth this day to witness against you that you shall soon perish from the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess; you shall not long endure in it but shall be utterly wiped out” (Deuteronomy 4:26).

This week marks the end of a mourning period preceding the 9th of Av, which commemorates numerous tragedies experienced by Jews. These include the destruction of the two Jerusalem temples, the expulsion from Spain, and the beginning of the First World War, which eventually led to the Second World War and the Nazi genocide.

The passage from the Prophets (haftarah) read after the weekly portion of the Pentateuch reflects a sense of relief and hope, suggesting that the worst is behind us.* This haftarah is usually referred to as “Comfort, oh comfort My people,” which is the first verse of Chapter 40 in Isaiah. Further on, the text explains one of the reasons to hope for better times. Amid the distress many of us experience, appalled by the disasters brought about by political leaders, it is comforting to be reminded that God “brings potentates to naught, makes rulers of the earth as nothing” (Isaiah 40:23). Let us pray and work to bring this about soon in our times.

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* “On Shabbat and holiday mornings, after the Torah is read, another biblical selection is read. Called the haftarah (plural, haftarot), this reading traditionally comes from one of the Prophets. Haftarah comes from the Hebrew root meaning ‘to conclude.'” – Reform Judaism.

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Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

Middle East Eye Video: “Israeli rabbis denounce Jewish prayers at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque”

(The Conversation) – In late July 2024, the Israeli military sent out the first 1,000 conscription notices to ultra-Orthodox Jewish men, following a unanimous Supreme Court ruling that the government must stop exempting them.

But will these Haredim, as the ultra-Orthodox are called in Israel, actually join the Israel Defense Forces and be followed by thousands more in the near future? It depends on whom they obey: the state authorities or their religious authorities.

Yitzhak Yosef, whose term as one of the government’s two chief rabbis recently ended, told religious students that “anyone who receives a draft notice should tear it up and not go,” the Israeli paper Yedioth Ahronoth reported. “He is a soldier in the army of God.”

Yosef is not the only Haredi rabbi to oppose army service, and many Haredi men have taken to the streets to protest since the Supreme Court’s decision, which followed years of political wrangling over the issue.

Ever since the state of Israel’s founding in 1948, ultra-Orthodox Jews – those who take the strictest approach toward following Jewish law, and are now around 14% of the population – have been exempt from military service. Among all other Jewish citizens, from the secular to the modern Orthodox, men are required to serve 32 months, and women 24, plus reserve duty. Amid the war in the Gaza Strip, other Israelis’ resentment toward the ultra-Orthodox exemption is at a high.

As a historian, I see the conscription debate as more than a political crisis for Israel’s government. The question is so sensitive because it opens up fundamental questions about the cohesion of Israeli society in general, and of the Haredi population’s attitude toward the Jewish state in particular.

It also illustrates the complexity of a country that is not as easily explained as many of its supporters and critics alike believe.

Initial compromise

Historically, Orthodox Jews struggled to justify the idea of a Jewish state. They prayed for centuries to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple, but had a specific return in mind: a Jewish state established by the Messiah. Any other kind of Jewish sovereignty, they believed, would be blasphemy.

Theodor Herzl, who founded modern political Zionism in the late 1800s, had a long beard like a Biblical prophet. Yet he was thoroughly secular and assimilated – he even lit a Christmas tree with his family. Herzl’s movement to encourage more European Jews to migrate to the Holy Land had little appeal for the Orthodox.

There was, however, always a minority among the Orthodox who identified with Zionism, the belief that Jewish people should have a sovereign political state in the land of Israel. According to the Talmud, the central source of Jewish law, saving lives is more important than other commandments – and Zionism saved Jews from pogroms and other anti-Jewish violence in Europe.

During the Holocaust, the vast majority of observant Jews in Eastern Europe were murdered. Afterward, many survivors who had previously opposed Zionism sought refuge in the new state of Israel.

On the eve of Israel’s independence, David Ben-Gurion, the prime minister of the state-to-be, entered an agreement with the leaders of the two camps of Orthodox Jews.

The Haredim, or ultra-Orthodox, still refused to recognize the legitimacy of a secular Jewish state. The so-called national religious camp, on the other hand, embraced it.

Among other concessions, the new state granted exemption to young Haredi Jews who wanted to study religious texts full time instead of joining the army. That hardly seemed consequential, as the young men in question numbered only a few hundred.

Shifting views

During the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel captured the Jewish holy sites in Jerusalem as well as the Gaza Strip, West Bank, Golan Heights and Sinai Peninsula. Since then, the national religious camp, once a moderate force, has developed into the spearhead of the right-wing settler movement.

Unlike the first generations of Orthodox Zionists, national religious Israelis today are Zionists not despite but because of messianism. Israel, they believe, will help bring about the messianic age. Therefore, right-wing religious Zionists – like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich – are enthusiastic proponents of army service.

Not so the Haredim, the ultra-Orthodox.

To be clear, Haredi Jews are very diverse. This demographic includes families with roots everywhere from Poland and Romania to Morocco and Iraq. It includes people who support Israel’s existence, and opponents who burn the flag on the country’s Independence Day. It includes men who join the workforce and men who dedicate their life to religious study.

The majority of Haredim living in Israel are not Zionists, yet live there because it is the Holy Land and the state subsidizes their study. Anything else – secular education, army service and, often, paid work – is seen as a distraction.

A minority of Haredi Jews serve in the armed forces voluntarily, and more have enlisted since the beginning of the latest Israel-Hamas war. But they have no legal obligation to do so; nor do Israel’s Arab citizens.

Growing Haredi sector

Israel’s governments have continued to tolerate this situation as ultra-Orthodox political parties became much-needed partners.

Yet legal and popular opposition has increased.

In 1998, the Supreme Court ruled that the defense minister has no right to exempt Haredi Jews from military service and asked the government to find ways to draft them. In 2014, a center-right government under Netanyahu passed a law aiming to have 60% of Haredi men serving within three years. But the 2015 elections brought Haredi parties back in power, and implementation was effectively abandoned.

Since then, Haredi parties have become more powerful as their population grows. Yet the Supreme Court has made clear that the government either needs to draft Haredim, or the legislature has to come up with a new law to excuse them.

Seven in 10 Israeli Jews oppose the blanket exemption, meaning another exemption might jeopardize Netanyahu’s government. Frustration is also rising over plans to raise the military service of men to three years and to double the duty of reservists to 42 days a year during emergencies.

None of this would matter if the Haredim were still the same tiny segment of society they were in 1948. Today, however, ultra-Orthodox women have 6.5 children on average, compared with 2.5 among other Jewish Israeli women, and around 1.3 million of the country’s 9.5 million people are Haredim.

The resulting transformation of Israeli society is easy to see. If the trend continues, Israel will become a very different, very religious society – one that can hardly survive economically.

On average, a non-Haredi household pays nine times more income tax than a Haredi one, while the latter receives over 50% more state support. Even if they were ready to work, most Haredim would have a hard time finding well-paid jobs, as their state-subsidized private schools teach hardly any secular topics.

For Israeli society, this portends further fragmentation and a weakening of the economy – to say nothing of the army. In Haredim’s eyes, however, Israel succeeds because of religious Jews’ study and prayer.

In total, the state plans to issue draft orders to 3,000 Haredi men over the next few weeks, and they are not chosen randomly. Most work, or study in higher education institutions, rather than traditional religious schools. This small group might indeed follow the secular state authorities, rather than the appeals of their rabbis.

Without even a minimal secular education, the majority of Haredi youth, however, would not be easily integrated into the army. Thus, the draft of this segment of Israel’s population may remain more symbolic – telling them that they too have to share more than the spiritual burden of a war-plagued society.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on March 15, 2024.

Michael Brenner, Professor of Jewish History and Culture at Ludwig Maximilian University and Abensohn Chair in Israel Studies, American University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

NBC News Video: “Jewish ultra-Orthodox men protest Supreme Court ruling on military draft”

Some demonstrators actually set a fire in front of the headquarters of the ruling Likud Party, which Netanyahu heads.

The first nine months of 2023 saw regular massive rallies against Netanyahu and his cabinet, which includes elements that are the Israeli equivalent of neo-Nazis. The horrid Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas caused Israelis to pull together and the demonstrations ceased for a long time, with a war cabinet having been formed that included opposition members. Earlier in June, however, Benny Gantz resigned from the war cabinet, essentially a government of national unity, and Netanyahu has now dissolved it. Gantz, a retired general, leads the centrist opposition National Unity Party.

On Saturday Gantz joined in a demonstration in the town of Kiryat Gat in the Southern District, demanding a hostage deal.

Some of the renewed opposition derives from Netanyahu’s refusal to cease bombing Gaza long enough to conclude a hostage exchange agreement with Hamas. The terrorist organization continues to hold an estimated 120 Israelis who were taken hostage on October 7, a mixture of civilians and military, of men and women, and of Israelis and guest workers (some from Thailand).

The families with members who remain prisoners in Gaza’s tunnels have concluded that there is not hope of a hostage deal as long as the current extremist government remains in power. At a news conference near the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv, hostage families announced that Netanyahu’s government has to fall before the hostages can be brought out.

Channel 13 carried an interview with hostage families who asserted that Netanyahu does not want a hostage deal because he knows that their return would signal the fall of his government.

Al Jazeera English Video: “‘All of the rats in the Knesset’: Mass antiwar protest in Israel”

Netanyahu is on trial for corruption and were he to lose the position of prime minister and become a civilian again, the trials would go forward and he could be jailed. One of his predecessors as prime minister, Ehud Olmert, went to prison for corruption. The Israeli prosecutors and police don’t play.

President Joe Biden told an interviewer that it would be legitimate to suspect that Netanyahu carries on the nine-month Gaza campaign because he wants to remain in power.

Warrants have been sought against Netanyahu for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

Netanyahu’s maximalist goal of “destroying Hamas” was brought into question this week by military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, who said, “Hamas is an idea, Hamas is a party, it is embedded in the hearts of people. Whoever thinks that we can make Hamas disappear is mistaken. It is the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been in this area for a great many years.” He said the most you could do is set up an effective rival to it that would provide aid to people and then publicize that this alternative, not Hamas, was doing effective charity work.

Hagari said that anyone who spoke about destroying Hamas was deceiving the public.

That assertion seemed to many observers a not very veiled reference to Netanyahu.

Yediot Aharanot columnist Nadav Eyal wrote in mid-June, “The IDF believes that the tactical achievement allows Israel to ‘pass a phase,’ and in fact to end the war in Gaza through an agreement to return the kidnapped. ‘The end of the war is not the end of the fighting,’ say security officials, ‘the intelligence will continue to flow and so will the possibility of attacking from the air or from the ground.” [Google translate.; h/t for cite BBC Monitoring.]

This increasing split between the extremist government, with its fascist elements that insist on a forever war in Gaza, and the Israeli officer corps, is momentous and perhaps gives the protesters hope.

However, in a parliamentary system Netanyahu can stay in power until 2026 as long as his coalition retains a majority and he can avoid a vote of no confidence. Israeli civil society is too weakened by decades of Likud Party Neoliberalism to intervene effectively.

The protesters were responding in part to dueling news releases about the possibility of a breakthrough in indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas in Cairo. Al Jazeera reports that a Qatari team is working on technical details of a proposal, which is usually a sign of movement in the negotiations. President Biden sent CIA Director William Burns to Egypt in case there were positive developments. The Hamas delegation in Cairo said Saturday that some progress has been made. UK sources said that a proposal was put forward “that would halt Israel’s war on Gaza for 40 days and exchange captives for Palestinian prisoners.” Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan told Al Jazeera, “It’s clear that we are moving forward. There are some good points.” But Hamas wants a pledge that Israel would not invade Rafah, which Netanyahu rejects. The Israeli government has not returned negotiators to Cairo. Netanyahu’s rejectionionism is infuriating the families of the hostages.

Hamas holds about 100 Israeli hostages, along with the bodies of 30 more who have died while captive. Israel routinely arrests Palestinians arbitrarily and holds them without charge, so there are in effect thousands of Palestinian hostages in Israeli custody. To be fair, some of the prisoners Hamas wants released were convicted of acts of terrorism.

Families of Israeli hostages joined the Tel Aviv protesters, blasting Netanyahu for its refusal to do a deal with Hamas. They said that Hamas had agreed to the deal but that Netanyahu was once again trying to undermine the talks.

Some demonstrators demanded new elections, while others insisted on a hostage exchange deal. Thousands gathered in Tel Aviv at the Kaplan-Begin intersection, which has been designated by the municipality “Democracy Square.” They called for immediate new elections even as the street was cut off by the police. Another demonstration was held for the families of the hostages and of Israelis detained in Tel Aviv. They said that “Hamas has indicated its agreement on a deal, but Netanyahu is once again trying to undermine the sole chance to save them, hiding behind ‘a high political source.'” They were referring to reports that the anonymous source in the Israeli government throwing cold water on the possibility of a breakthrough in negotiations with reporters is actually just Netanyahu himself.

The hostage families added, “the Israeli people want the hostages returned alive and agree with paying the price, but Netanyahu prefers his political alliance with [extremists] Ben-Gvir and Smotrich.” They said, “If the price for the return of the hostages is stopping the war, the it must be stopped immediately.”

Many hostage families are afraid that an invasion of Rafah will kill the hostages.

WION Video: “Israel-war: Protest in Tel Aviv for release of hostages, thousands of Israelis take to streets”

The leader of the opposition, Yair Lapid, attended the demonstration in Tel Aviv and said, “There is nothing called victory without a deal and the return of the hostages. Instead of all the stupid messages released by ‘a political source,’ Netanyahu must send a negotiating team tonight to Cairo and say to them that they must not return without a deal and the return of the hostages.”

He added, “There is no other mission, or anything else to do. Yesh Atid made promises and will implement them and we will be a complete safety net for the completion of this deal.” “Yesh Atid” or “There is a Future” is the centrist political party that Lapid leads.

Hundreds of people demonstrated outside the prime minister’s residence in Caesarea, demanding elections. Others rallied at the Karkur intersection on route 65 for a hostage exchange deal.

More thousands of protesters came out in Jerusalem, Beersheba, Netanya, Ra’anana and elsewhere to demand a hostage exchange deal.

At the same time, the Religious Zionism and Jewish Power leaders demanded an immediate Israeli invasion of Rafah, according to Arab 48 . Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir and Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich supported Netanyahu and his decision not to send negotiators to Cairo. They emphasized that Israel’s priority must be to continue the war and to invade the region of Rafah in Gaza rather than a deal that might lead to the release of the Israelis held by Hamas.

The Anne Frank House Center says that, “Zionism is about the pursuit of an independent Jewish state.” That was accomplished in 1948, and affirmed in bloody wars in 1956, 1967, 1973 and in various attacks and battles since then. On October 7 the Zionist military apparatus, for all its impressiveness, failed because of hubris. Modern Jewish history didn’t start then. The post-World War I San Remo Conference of 1920 was the genesis for current dynamics, when the artificial boundaries of the Levant were created by the victorious Western empires.  

Zionism is abused as a social and religious cudgel by the Evangelical movement, and has become another tool of divisiveness for the American far-right. Evangelicals, not Jews, comprise a greater plurality of Israeli tourism now, as more American and European Jews reject this narrative of a “false idol,” in the words of author and activist Naomi Klein. She wrote in a recent ‘Street Seder Address’ published in The Guardian, that Zionism “is a false idol that takes our most profound biblical stories of justice and emancipation from slavery – the story of Passover itself – and turns them into brutalist weapons of colonial land theft, roadmaps for ethnic cleansing and genocide . . . . . a metaphor for human liberation that has traveled across multiple faiths to every corner of this globe – and dared to turn it into a deed of sale for a militaristic ethnostate.”

Netanyahu’s virulent Likud form of Zionism, which he has now allied with the openly racist and even genocidal Religious Zionism and Jewish Power blocs, has created an image of the movement that is anathema to many progressive and leftist activists, and it fuels anti-Semitism as less informed people on the right and left conflate this ruthless ultra-nationalism with Judaism. Just as marriages can run their course, leading to a necessary divorce, the time has come for Jews to divorce Zionism. Bibi has become a literal Pharaoh to Palestinians.  Klein adds, “From the start it has produced an ugly kind of freedom that saw Palestinian children not as human beings but as demographic threats – much as the pharaoh in the Book of Exodus feared the growing population of Israelites, and thus ordered the death of their sons. It is a false idol that has led far too many of our own people down a deeply immoral path that now has them justifying the shredding of core commandments: thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not covet.”

Democracy Now! Video: “Naomi Klein: Jews Must Raise Voices for Palestine, Oppose “False Idol of Zionism”

It’s important to remember that “Judaism and Zionism are two distinct terms often intertwined, in reality, they represent rather distinct concepts with different historical, cultural, and most importantly, political implications,” as noted in The Business Standard.  They add, “Following the establishment of Israel, Zionism became an ideology that continues to support the development and protection of the State of Israel. Zionism, at its core, can be understood as a manifestation of Jewish nationalism.”  Judaism is a religion, while Zionism is a political ideology.

 The original anti-Zionists were, “from fringe Orthodox sects and maintain that Israel can only be regained miraculously. They view the present state as a blasphemous human attempt to usurp God’s role, and many seek to dismantle the secular State of Israel. However, unlike many gentile anti­-Zionists, Jewish anti-Zionists usually firmly believe in the Jewish right to the Land of Israel, but only at the future time of redemption.”  Though the Neturei Karta were the most visible of observant anti-Zionists, most Haredim in Israel continue that tradition with their refusal to participate in the military or support the embattled state.

Klein asserts that the Zionist ideology, “. . .  is a false idol that equates Jewish freedom with cluster bombs that kill and maim Palestinian children. Zionism is a false idol that has betrayed every Jewish value, including the value we place on questioning – a practice embedded in the Seder with its four questions asked by the youngest child. . . . Including the love we have as a people for text and for education. . . .Today, this false idol justifies the bombing of every university in Gaza; the destruction of countless schools, of archives, of printing presses; the killing of hundreds of academics, of journalists, of poets.” She calls this “scholasticide,” which is parallel to the burning of libraries and synagogues by Nazis.

The American Jewish Committee (AJC) is one of many Western Jewish organizations that continues to promote the false idol narrative.  They argue that anti-Zionism means that Jews “do not have a right to self-determination — or that the Jewish people’s religious and historical connection to Israel is invalid.” The AJC also says that, “Calling for a Palestinian nation-state, while simultaneously advocating for an end to the Jewish nation-state is hypocritical at best, and potentially anti-Semitic.” The polemical problem is that the Jewish nation is a powerful “fact on the ground,” though threatened by hostile outside forces. Israel is a political reality. But Judaism and Zionism are also threatened internally by Bibi’s leadership record of self-destruction, as his primary aim is political self-preservation. Israel’s economy and security are also undermined by the refusal of the Haredim to support the state and serve in the military.

Not only can Israel remain secure without Zionism; it may become more secure, as the provocations towards Palestinians would cease. The Temple Sunday School narrative minimizes, euphemizes and marginalizes what Palestinians suffered in the Nabka, concurrent with Israeli independence. It’s time to correct that false narrative, and recognize that Zionism has run its course.

The outpouring of objection to American funding of the Israeli war machine is unprecedented in size and scope. In turn the size and scope of government efforts to quash these protests is also unprecedented, now becoming evocative of Kent State in 1970. That’s the first thing that comes to mind when anyone proposes placing National Guard troops on a US college campus. Doing so would be a provocation and incitement for escalation, and that game plan appears to be unfolding.

Judaism and its offshoots, Christianity and Islam, have all been plagued by departures from their spiritual ethics into orgies of violence. We see this phenomenon in Bibi’s brand of imperial Zionism, Hamas’ and other extremist groups’ violent perversion of Islam, preferring an ideology of hate and misogyny, and the White Christian Nationalist movement in the US, fueled by Trump. The religions of Christianity and Islam have struggled to come to terms with secular modernity, and have seen powerful and violent movements during that struggle. Judaism has the spiritual Reform movement, but no corresponding social-political movement. Judaism came first and has an obligation to take the lead in creating a new paradigm, of a monotheistic, biblically-rooted tradition that nevertheless stands for tolerance and human rights for all. Jews must recognize that the shelf-life of Zionism has expired. Also important is that Judaism is a religion, not a form of ethno-nationalism, despite former President Trump’s attempts to dragoon all Jews into the effort to censor free speech over Palestinian human rights.

The impressive number of 17 seats won by Israel’s extremist religious party, Shas, in the 1999 election was a watershed moment in the history of these parties, whose ideological roots go back to Avraham Itzhak Kook and his son Zvi Yehuda Hacohen.

Israeli historian Ilan Pappé referred to the Kooks’ ideological influence as a “fusion of dogmatic messianism and violence”.

Throughout the years, these religious parties struggled on several fronts: their inability to unify their ranks, their failure to appeal to mainstream Israeli society and their inability to strike the balance between their messianic political discourse and the kind of language – not necessarily behaviour – that Israel’s western allies expect.

Though much of the financial support and political backing of Israel’s extremists originate in the United States and, to a lesser extent, European countries, Washington has been clear regarding its public perception of Israel’s religious extremists.

In 2004, the United States banned the Kach party, which could be seen as the modern manifestation of the Kooks and Israel’s early religious Zionist ideologues.

The founder of the group, Meir Kahane was, in fact, assassinated in November 1990 while the extremist rabbi – responsible for much violence against innocent Palestinians throughout the years – was giving another hate-filled speech in Manhattan.

Kahane’s death was only the start of much violence meted out by his followers, lead among them an American doctor, Baruch Goldstein, who gunned down on 25 February 1994, dozens of Palestinian Muslim worshippers at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron.

Hindustan Times Video: “‘Attack Rafah Or…’: Ben-Gvir Threatens To Bring Down Netanyahu Govt After IDF Troop Withdrawal”

The number of Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers while protesting the massacre was nearly as many as those killed by Goldstein earlier in the day, a tragic but a perfect representation of the relationship between the Israeli state and the violent settlers who operate as part of a larger state agenda.

That massacre was a watershed moment in the history of religious Zionism. Instead of serving as an opportunity to marginalise their growing influence, by the supposedly more liberal Zionists, they grew in power and, ultimately, political influence within the Israeli state.

Goldstein himself became a hero, whose grave, in Israel’s most extremist illegal settlement in the West Bank, Kiryat Arba, is now a popular shrine, a place of pilgrimage for thousands of Israelis.

Particularly telling is that Goldstein’s shrine has been built opposite Meir Kahane’s Memorial Park, which is indicative of the clear ideological connections between these individuals, groups and also funders.

In recent years, however, the traditional role played by Israel’s religious Zionists began to shift, leading to the election of Itamar Ben-Gvir to the Israeli Knesset in 2021 and, ultimately, to his role as the country’s national security minister in December 2022.

Ben-Gvir is a follower of Kahane. “It seems to me that ultimately Rabbi Kahane was about love. Love for Israel without compromise, without any other consideration,” he said in November 2022.

But, unlike Kahane, Ben-Gvir was not satisfied with the role of religious Zionists as cheerleaders for the settlement movement, almost daily raids of Al-Aqsa and the occasional attacks on Palestinians. He wanted to be at the centre of Israeli political power.

Whether Ben-Gvir achieved his status as a direct result of the successful grassroots work of religious Zionism, or because the political circumstances of Israel itself have changed in his favour, is an interesting debate.

The truth, however, might be somewhere in the middle. The historic failure of Israel’s so-called political left – namely the Labor Party – has, in recent years, propelled a relatively unfamiliar phenomenon – the political centre.

Meanwhile, Israel’s traditional right, the Likud Party, grew weaker, partly because it failed to appeal to the growing, more youthful religious Zionism constituency, and also because of the series of splits, which occurred as a result of Ariel Sharon’s breaking-up of the party in and the founding of Kadima in 2005 – a party which has been long disbanded.

To survive, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has redefined his party to its most extremist version of all time and, thus, began to attract religious Zionists with the hope of filling the gaps created because of internal infighting within the Likud.

By doing so, Netanyahu has granted religious Zionists the opportunity of a lifetime.

Soon, following the 7 October Al-Aqsa Flood operation, and in the early days of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, Ben-Gvir launched his National Guard, a group which he tried, but failed, to compose prior to the war.

Thanks to Ben-Gvir, Israel, now, per the words of opposition leader Yair, has become a country with a “private militia”.

By 19 March, Ben-Gvir announced that 100,000 gun permits had been handed over to his supporters. It is within this period that the US began imposing ‘sanctions’ on a few individuals affiliated with Israel’s settler extremist movement, a small slap on the wrist considering the massive damage that has already been done and the great violence that is likely to follow in the coming months and years.

Unlike Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir’s thinking is not limited to his desire to reach a specific position within the government. Israel’s religious extremists are seeking a fundamental and irreversible shift in Israeli politics.

The relatively recent push to change the relationship between the judicial and exclusive branches of government was as important to those extremists as it was to Netanyahu himself. The latter, however, has championed such an initiative to shield himself against legal accountability, while Ben-Gvir’s supporters have a different reason in mind: they want to be able to dominate the government and the military, with no accountability or oversight.

Israel’s religious Zionists are playing a long game, which is not linked to a particular election, individual or government coalition. They are redefining the state, along with its ideology. And they are winning.

It goes without saying that Ben-Gvir, and his threats to topple Netanyahu’s coalition government, have been the main driving force behind the genocide in Gaza.

If Meir Kahane was still alive, he would have been proud of his followers. The ideology of the once marginalised and loathed extremist rabbi is now the backbone of Israeli politics.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Via Middle East Monitor

The Court’s decision was prompted by a petition filed by The Movement for Quality Government, the Brothers and Sisters in Arms and 240 other Israeli citizens. They object to exempting thousands of ultra-Orthodox draft-eligible people from military service. The government instructed the IDF not to draft the yeshiva students in June 2023, though the exemption had expired. The petitioners responded saying, “It’s very saddening that instead of understanding that something illegal is being done here – a government decision in violation of the law – the attorney general is enabling the continuation of the illegal situation and allowing the sinner to benefit. In fact, she is defending an illegal situation in court.”

In a gross act of hubris-chutzpah, Bibi promised his ultra-Orthodox parties that the legislation they want for extending exemptions will be passed. This would not be the first time Bibi has made promises to allies he doesn’t have the standing to keep, without cooperation from other parties unlikely to go along. He’s become well-accustomed to sacrificing Israel’s immediate and long-term interests for his own political survival, not unlike Donald Trump. And any such bill that might pass the Knesset will not pass the Supreme Court, judging by their recent actions.

 The exemption of yeshiva and rabbinical students from military service dates to the founding of Israel in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Most of the European and global rabbinate, libraries and scholarship history had been wiped out by the Nazis. The exemption was necessary to rebuild 20^th Century Judaism from the ground up to re-stock the synagogues, universities and yeshivas. By most accounts, that was amply accomplished by the 1973 War. The original exemption applied to only 400 yeshiva students, at a time when the comprised a small segment of the population. Ironically, the Haredim were some of the original anti-Zionist, who opposed the creation of the Jewish State, which they viewed as an impediment to the return of the Messiah. So in 1948, their opting out of military service was not significant to security.  Now they comprise roughly 14% of the Israeli population, as noted above, and is the fastest growing demographic, creating a drag on the economy and military. They remained exempt from the conscription pool when the nation has never been more embattled with wars on multiple fronts.

In 1998, the Court dispensed with the exemption, as a violation of equal protection law. Since then, a series of short-term agreements through the Courts and Knesset kept it in place. The most recent one in 2018 expired on March 31, after which, Bibi tried and failed to negotiate with the Court to extend the deadline; and pass a law to permanently enshrine it in Israeli law.

The Court’s ruling validated what many exemption objectors argued all along, that the government could not subsidize the yeshiva students, while exempting them from the conscription requirements of all other Israeli citizens. This was an application of the American “equal protection” concept, enshrined in the 14^th Constitutional Amendment. Israel had no such law until 2021.    

“How military exemptions for the ultra-Orthodox divide Israel” | REUTERS Video

This Court decision has fractured the Israeli government, which has been a delicate balance of ultra-Orthodox leaders and far-right secular groups promoting illegal settlements in Palestinian territory. If PM Benjamin Netanyahu does not defy his own Court (again), the Haredim might leave the government prompting new elections. But if the decision is not honored, some secular politicians might prompt the collapse. The Likud government is dependent on two ultra-Orthodox parties to keep the government in power, Shas and United Torah Judaism.

Haredim or Haredi are the most observant Jews adhering to every one of the 613 laws in the Torah, Talmud, the Midrash and other formal commentaries. Unlike the Chassidic Chabad Lubavichers, the Haredim are rigidly exclusionary towards other Jews, and self-segregating; while Chabad engages in secular outreach and is accepting of Jews who are not as observant. The self-exclusionary nature of Haredi is fueled by the fact that, “They teach their children to despise secular Jews. They do not recognize the state, they are anti-Zionist; to them, we are simply a cash register that must be robbed,” according to Haaretz columnist Nehemia Shtrassler.

The Court had given the government the April 1 deadline to submit a new bill and until June 30 to pass it, when it ruled the exemption to be a violation of “equal protection,” and thus discriminatory. The war cabinet consists of Bibi, along with Ministers Yoav Gallant and Benny Gantz. The latter two argue that Bibi’s proposal does not go far enough to meet the manpower needs of the IDF, and they want more Haredi men in the troops.  Most of the 287,000 reservists called up on October 7 have since been released, but will return to active duty soon. Many reservists resent being compelled to serve longer active terms, and want the Haredi men drafted.

The drama was elevated when Gantz, the former general, opposition leader and war cabinet member;  called out this untenable situation, and demanded new elections in September. Gantz suggested that early elections would provide Israel with international legitimacy, a direct reference to public comments by the US and other allies, over the growing objections to Bibi’s leadership, and the self-destructive nature of the far-right government. He said, “I believe Israeli society needs to renew its contract with its leadership, and I think the only way to do it and still maintain the national effort in fighting Hamas… is by having an agreed election date. ”  His comments elicited a harsh reaction from the Likud, dismissing the call as “petty politics,” claiming it would lead to paralysis, divisiveness and an impediment to freeing the hostages; as if they’re on track to accomplish any of this, and actually care about the hostages more than causing famine in Gaza. Bibi claimed that new elections would “paralyze the country,” as if he hasn’t already accomplished that. He follows the same double-speak playbook as Trump with the media.

But Gantz’s position also brought parallel, but different objections from fellow Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, who insisted that Gantz’s centrist position does not go far enough. Lapid said, “Israel cannot wait another six months until the worst, most dangerous and failed government in the country’s history goes home. As long as we are a democracy, there is a tool that changes reality. It is called elections. Election now!” This places Israeli opposition leaders in alliance with Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. His dramatic Senate Floor speech last month called for new Israeli elections; and also called out Bibi for focusing more on his political survival than the security of his nation, or minimizing civilian casualties in Gaza. But it’s President Joe Biden’s move now to halt US aid to the Israeli war machine, to dignify Schumer’s rhetoric and legitimize his own.

The Bibi government is like to fall soon, a consequence of political over-reach for an untenable situation, and his own brand of hubris-chutzpah. After a series of inconsequential elections and back room bargaining, which yielded no majority; he managed to cobble a fractured government, composed of ministers with competing and conflicting agendas and interests. It was destined to fail from the beginning, and now they face a dilemma certain to bring it down. It’s a matter of time. Benny Gantz of the National Unity Party has declared that if new elections aren’t held by September, his party will leave the government.

The Israeli Supreme Court issued the ruling on Thursday evening, which freezes — as of April — the funds for ultra-Orthodox Jewish schools, the students of which decline military conscription. The decision came after Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had asked the courts for a delay of thirty days so that his government could come to an agreement on the law regarding the conscription of the Haredim or ultra-Orthodox.

Since Israel’s founding, members of this religious community have been excused from serving in the military and are instead subsidized through age 26 to study the Hebrew Bible in Yeshiva or religious schools.

Arab 48 quotes Netanyahu as saying that “We are able to realize the objectives of the war and solve the issue of conscription.”

He added, “Given these circumstances, I ask the honorable court not to decide on the issue of conscription and related matters for a period of 30 days, so that we can complete the agreements.”

The court issued a provisional decision forbidding the transfer of government monies to ultra-Orthodox schools and seminaries where the students have not been given a deferment or been excused entirely from military service.

The provisional decree is effective as of April 1. The government has the opportunity to submit an appeal before the end of April. A nine-judge panel will hear appeals against the ruling during May.

Some 180,000 seminary students currently receive government subsidies, and about 60,000 of them would see their funds cut off under this court decree, according to AP.

TRT World Video: “Military draft bill creates rift in Israeli government”

The exemption from military service for the ultra-Orthodox has become enormously unpopular during the Israeli campaign against Gaza, where some 500 troops have been killed and thousands wounded. The resentment has grown in part because of the high birthrate among the ultra-Orthodox, such that they now make up some 13 percent of Israel’s population, up from 2 percent when Israel was founded. To have such a large group paid to pray while other Israelis are fighting and dying is increasingly untenable.

The need to subsidize the ultra-Orthodox, many of whom do not receive a practical education and therefore end up unemployed or under-employed, has driven the Israeli government to support their relocation to the Palestinian West Bank, where the government usurps Palestinian land for inexpensive housing for these Jewish fundamentalists. Some 55.8% of ultra-Orthodox men are unemployed.

Netanyahu is hiding behind his war on Gaza to ask for further delays in settling the conscription issue. Some analysts believe that he is prolonging the war precisely in order to avoid having to face such political crises.

The Supreme Court abrogated a law passed in 2015 that codified the excusing of the ultra-Orthodox from military service, on the grounds that it violates the principle of equality and burden-sharing among citizens of the Israeli state.

Some 66,000 ultra-Orthodox men have been exempted from military service this year, and only 500 of them chose to serve anyway, according to Shalom Lipner at the Atlantic Council.

This crisis has come to a head at a crucial time. The Netanyahu government needs the support of ultra-Orthodox parties to stay in power.

The chief rabbi of the Jews with North African and Spanish origins, the Sephardim, Yitzhak Yosef, said a couple of weeks ago that the ultra-Orthodox would all simply leave the country if forced to serve in the army. Many members of this group do not recognize the legitimacy of the Israeli state, insisting that Jews can only be ingathered to a Jewish state in the holy land when the Messiah comes.

Yosef also alleged that it was the prayers of the ultra-Orthodox in the seminaries that were actually responsible for Israeli military victories.

Aryeh Deri, of Moroccan heritage and the leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, lambasted the ruling as “unprecedented bullying of Bible students in a Jewish state.”

Shas has 11 seats in the 120-member Israeli parliament or Knesset, and United Torah Judaism, another ultra-Orthodox party, has 7 seats. Netanyahu only has 64 seats in parliament, and were either or both of the ultra-Orthodox parties to withdraw in protest, his government would fall, leading to new elections.

Just when you think nothing can surprise you anymore in Israeli politics, someone always comes along with a new twist.

This time it was Yitzhak Yosef, one of Israel’s two chief rabbis. In response to debates over whether ultra-Orthodox Jews should be required to serve in the military, or continue to be excused to study religious texts full time, he had a simple answer:

“If they force us to go to the army, we’ll all go abroad,” he declared on March 9, 2024.

Ultra-Orthodox resistance to conscription is nothing new.

But the forcefulness of this declaration is new, especially coming in the midst of a war. And Yosef is not any random rabbi. He is the son of Ovadia Yosef, who was the spiritual leader of the Shas Party: an important partner in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing and religious governing coalition.

Ever since the state of Israel’s founding in 1948, ultra-Orthodox Jews – those who take the strictest approach toward following Jewish law, and are now around 14% of the population – have been exempt from military service. Among all other Jewish citizens, from the secular to the modern Orthodox, men are required to serve 32 months, and women 24, plus reserve duty.

In 2017, the country’s Supreme Court ruled against the exemptions, but they have continued through a series of legislative workarounds. The latest is due to expire at the end of March 2024, however – and other Israelis’ resentment toward the ultra-Orthodox exemption is at a high.

As a historian, I see the conscription debate as more than a political crisis for Israel’s government. The question is so sensitive because it opens up fundamental questions about the cohesion of Israeli society in general, and of the ultra-Orthodox, or “Haredi,” population’s attitude toward the Jewish state in particular.

Image by AnnaAnouk from Pixabay

It also illustrates the complexity of a country that is not as easily explained as many of its supporters and critics alike believe.

Initial compromise

Historically, Orthodox Jews struggled to justify the idea of a Jewish state. They prayed for centuries to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple, but had a specific return in mind: a Jewish state established by the Messiah. Any other kind of Jewish sovereignty, they believed, would be blasphemy.

Theodor Herzl, who founded modern political Zionism in the late 1800s, had a long beard and looked like a Biblical prophet. Yet he was thoroughly secular and assimilated – he even lit a Christmas tree with his family. Herzl’s movement to encourage more European Jews to migrate to the Holy Land had little appeal for the Orthodox.

There was, however, always a minority among the Orthodox who identified with Zionism, the belief that Jewish people should have a sovereign political state in the land of Israel. According to the Talmud, the central source of Jewish law, saving lives is more important than other commandments – and Zionism saved Jews from pogroms and other anti-Jewish violence in Europe.

During the Holocaust, the vast majority of observant Jews in Eastern Europe were murdered. Afterward, many survivors who had previously opposed Zionism sought refuge in the new state of Israel.

On the eve of Israel’s independence, David Ben-Gurion, the prime minister of the state-to-be, entered an agreement with the leaders of the two camps of Orthodox Jews.

The Haredim, or ultra-Orthodox, still refused to recognize the legitimacy of a secular Jewish state. The so-called national religious camp, on the other hand, embraced it.

Among other concessions, the new state granted exemption to young Haredi Jews who wanted to study religious texts full time instead of joining the army. That hardly seemed consequential, as the young men in question numbered only a few hundred.

Shifting views

During the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel captured the Jewish holy sites in Jerusalem as well as the Gaza Strip, West Bank, Golan Heights and Sinai Peninsula. Since then, the national religious camp, once a moderate force, has developed into the spearhead of the right-wing settler movement.

Unlike the first generations of Orthodox Zionists, national religious Israelis today are Zionists not despite but because of messianism. Israel, they believe, will help bring about the messianic age. Therefore, right-wing religious Zionists – like Netanyahu’s cabinet ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich – are enthusiastic proponents of army service.

Not so the Haredim, the ultra-Orthodox.

To be clear, Haredi Jews are very diverse. This demographic includes families with roots everywhere from Poland and Romania to Morocco and Iraq. It includes people who support Israel’s existence, and opponents who burn the flag on Independence Day. It includes men who join the workforce and men who dedicate their life to religious study.

The majority of Haredim living in Israel are not Zionists, yet live there because it is the Holy Land and the state subsidizes their study. Anything else – secular education, army service, and often paid work – is seen as a distraction.

A minority of Haredi Jews serve in the armed forces voluntarily, and more have enlisted since the beginning of the latest Israel-Hamas war. But they have no legal obligation to do so; nor do Israel’s Arab citizens.

Growing Haredi sector

Israel’s governments have continued to tolerate this situation as ultra-Orthodox political parties became much-needed partners.

Yet legal and popular opposition has increased.

In 1998, the Supreme Court ruled that the defense minister has no right to exempt Haredi Jews from military service and asked the government to find ways to draft them. In 2014, a center-right government under Netanyahu passed a law aiming to have 60% of Haredi men serving within three years. But the 2015 elections brought Haredi parties back in power, and implementation was effectively abandoned.

Since then, Haredi parties have become more powerful as their population grows. Yet the Supreme Court has made clear that by the end of March 2024, the government either needs to draft Haredim, or the legislature has to come up with a new law to excuse them.

Seven in 10 Israeli Jews oppose the blanket exemption, meaning another exemption might jeopardize Netanyahu’s government. Frustration is also rising over plans to raise the military service of men to three years and to double the duty of reservists to 42 days a year during emergencies.

None of this would matter if the Haredim were still the same tiny segment of society they were in 1948. Today, however, ultra-Orthodox women have 6.5 children on average, compared with 2.5 among other Jewish Israeli women, and 1 in 4 young children are ultra-Orthodox.

The resulting transformation of Israeli society is easy to see. If the trend continues, Israel will become a very different, very religious society – one that can hardly survive economically.

On average, a non-Haredi household pays nine times more income tax than a Haredi one, while the latter receives over 50% more state support. Even if they were ready to work, most Haredim would have a hard time finding well-paid jobs, as their state-subsidized private schools teach hardly any secular topics.

For Israeli society, this portends further fragmentation and a weakening of the economy – to say nothing of the army.

But, Chief Rabbi Yitzhak says, this will never happen. In his and other Haredim’s eyes, Israel’s soldiers succeed only because religious Jews study and pray for them.

“They need to understand that without the Torah, without the yeshivas, there’d be nothing, no success for the army,” he said.

This article has been updated to correct the date that the military exemption is due to expire.

Michael Brenner, Professor of Jewish History and Culture at Ludwig Maximilian University and Abensohn Chair in Israel Studies, American University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.