Lebanon’s BDS Controversy

Earlier this month, the celebrated Lebanese-born French author Amin Maalouf was interviewed by an Israeli television station, sparking an outcry from the Lebanese BDS movement, which in turn led to defenses of Maalouf in the Lebanese press and social media. Surveying the ensuing debate, Hanin Ghaddar takes Maalouf’s defenders to task:

Some [of those speaking in his defense] said that Maalouf is entitled to communicate freely with an Israeli entity because he’s more French than he is Lebanese. According to others, Maalouf has won enough honors, such as becoming a “an immortal” in 2012 by being the first Lebanese to join the elite ranks of the French Academy, [that] he is therefore above the law! Others defended him based on the content of the interview, [since] it was about culture, not politics. Some even went to the extent of saying that what he did was a big mistake, but they are generous enough to forgive him because he is the “pride of the Lebanese.” . . .

What about the rest of us? These arguments [do nothing more than assert] that those who are not privileged with Maalouf’s French nationality, prestigious status, or the luxury of living in the West should not have the same freedom. A true debate cannot be based on exclusive rights or entitlements. A true debate should revisit the taboo itself, and challenge the law, because no law is sacrosanct, and no cause is sacrosanct, including the Palestinian cause. . . .

The defenders of Maalouf—by missing the main issue at hand—turned this debate against us, [the Lebanese people].

Read more at NOW

More about: Arab World, BDS, Israel & Zionism, Lebanon, Literature

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society