What Would the End of the EU Mean for Israel?

The European Union, beset by severe fiscal problems and the mass influx of migrants, and faced with rising anti-EU sentiment in the UK, Poland, and elsewhere, no longer seems to have a certain future. Israeli policymakers, writes Manfred Gerstenfeld, must consider the possible effects of its demise or transformation:

A total break-up of the EU has both advantages and disadvantages for Israel. Rather than dealing with the EU, nominally representing 500 million citizens, Israel would then have to deal with many smaller countries. This may be beneficial when such countries attempt to meddle in Israel’s internal policies, [since they would no longer have] the power of a supranational body behind them.

However, if the EU does disintegrate completely, countries such as Sweden—which is ruled by an anti-Israel government dominated by social democrats—may embark on more extreme policies toward Israel when not bound within the EU to seek compromise. Although the absence of an EU may make it easier to face off against the Swedes, very undesirable precedents may be created.

In the light of all this a shrinking of the EU’s power and competencies without an actual breakup would probably be best for Israel.

Read more at Jerusalem Post

More about: Europe and Israel, European Union, Israel & Zionism, Israel diplomacy, Sweden

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