The Palestinian Authority’s Stabbing Strategy

Noting that the current wave of stabbings, shootings, and car-rammings in Israel is consistent with a policy first adopted by Fatah at its 2009 party conference—namely, encouraging just enough terror to get attention but not enough to provoke an overwhelming Israeli response—Yossi Kuperwasser argues that it has so far proved successful:

[T]he terror campaign so far has gone [as planned by the PLO] leadership without the need for its direct, guiding involvement. The Palestinian leadership regained attention . . . in the international arena and in Iran, though, ironically, much less so in the Arab world which is totally preoccupied with its own problems.

Despite the vicious incitement and inhumane terror attacks that have provoked some criticism of the Palestinians, no threats or pressure has been directed at the Palestinian leadership. . . . It is not surprising, then, that up to this point the Palestinians are quite satisfied with the results of the campaign, and in discussions held by the Fatah Central Committee and other leaderships forums, the decision was made to continue supporting and encouraging this effort unabatedly. . . . .

So far Israel has taken direct steps against the terrorists and their families, . . . but has refrained from taking any measures against the Palestinian leadership itself. . . . As long as this soft-glove attitude is adopted, it is hard to see any incentive for the Palestinian leadership to reconsider its policy.

Read more at Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs

More about: Israel & Zionism, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian terror, PLO

 

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