The Case for U.S. Strikes on Hizballah

Although it is difficult to imagine that the Obama administration would take any such action, which is bound to upset the Iranian regime, Daniel Serwer argues that American aerial strikes on Hizballah forces in Syria would accomplish much both strategically and diplomatically:

Hizballah’s fighters have enabled Assad to make progress against his opponents, especially those associated with the Free Syrian Army fighters backed by the United States. That progress has hardened Assad’s negotiating stance and blocked the search for a political solution. Assad is winning, and he sees no reason to accept a transition away from his rule. . . . . A shift in the military balance is [thus] essential to ending the war. . . .

[Unlike Russia, Iran, or the Assad regime itself], Hizballah is a non-state actor. It is also a U.S.-designated terrorist group that has [killed hundreds of] Americans, among many others. . . .

U.S. targeting of Hizballah would send a strong but still limited message to the Syrian opposition and its allies in Turkey and the Persian Gulf: we are prepared to attack Shiite as well as Sunni terrorists, but it’s up to you to take advantage of the opportunity and come to the negotiating table ready to reach a serious political settlement. It would also send a strong but likewise limited message to Iran and Russia: we will not continue to tolerate your intervention in Syria without responding. The time for a political settlement is now. . . .

In short, [attacking Hizballah] would mostly please and embolden Washington’s friends and discomfit its antagonists. It would also reassert U.S. commitment to fighting terrorism of all sorts, renew Washington’s commitment to holding Hizballah accountable, hasten an end to the Syrian civil war, and make a political settlement more likely.

Read more at Washington Post

More about: Hizballah, Iran, Politics & Current Affairs, Russia, Syrian civil war, U.S. Foreign policy

 

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