Will the Palestinian Authority Pay Salaries to Arsonists?

Mahmoud Abbas received much praise for sending teams of Palestinian firefighters to help their Israeli counterparts put out the wave of fires sweeping through Israel. But, as Itamar Marcus points out, this gesture means little if the PA rewards the terrorists who started the fires in the first place:

According to Palestinian law, . . . anyone imprisoned [by Israel] for “resisting the occupation” receives a high monthly salary. Therefore, all of those convicted and imprisoned for arson will receive PA salaries “from the day of arrest until the day of release.” . . . Today there are approximately 7,000 Palestinian prisoners on the PA payroll. The PA rewards them every month for terrorism, and this generous arrangement will cost the PA NIS 488 million in 2016 alone, according to the PA’s publicized budget.

If Abbas was ever serious about stopping the PA’s ongoing support for terrorism, he now has the perfect opportunity to make a difference. Instead of merely enjoying complimentary headlines and nice photo-ops of Palestinian firemen with Israelis, Abbas should decree that the arsonists will not receive PA salaries. . . . Should Abbas insist on adding the imprisoned arsonists to the PA payroll, his hypocrisy in sending a few fire engines to Israel will be exposed to the world.

Should Abbas decide to deny salaries to the arsonists, this may indicate the beginning of a fundamental change in the PA attitude toward terrorism. However, if Abbas cancels salaries only to the arsonists, it will not be enough. If he says to the world that the PA will not pay salaries to those who burned trees, rocks, and homes while it continues to pay salaries to murderers of men, women and children, his values and behavior, which cause many to see him as a terrorist leader, will remain unchanged. . . . Right now while he has the world’s attention, having made this small gesture in the direction of peace, let him take a serious step.

Read more at Gatestone

More about: Israel & Zionism, Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian terror

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