Saudi Arabia May Be an Ally, but Its Textbooks Are Filled with Hatred

During his visit to Saudi Arabia, President Trump stressed that Washington and Riyadh can join together in fighting Islamic State, Iran, and other violent Islamist entities. David Andrew Weinberg urges the U.S. to pressure the Saudi government to do its part by changing the tenor of its textbooks, which are used in the kingdom and exported to over a dozen other Muslim countries:

Until 2015, the Saudi curriculum was so austere that Islamic State was reportedly using the kingdom’s textbooks at schools in territory it had conquered. . . . Saudi textbooks for the current academic year call for the slaughter of people who engage in a range of non-violent acts considered immoral by Saudi religious authorities. This includes adultery, gay sex, disavowing or mocking Islam, and even “sorcery.” . . .

A current high-school textbook . . . claims that the goal of Zionism is world domination, namely a “global Jewish government to control the entire world.” It singles out Zionism among all other self-determination movements as inherently racist and expansionist, somehow even blaming it for spreading drugs and sexually-transmitted diseases in the Islamic world. . . . [Another] declares that “Christianity in its current state is an invalid, perverted religion” whose promoters seek to impose its dominion over Muslim nations through “intellectual invasion.” . . .

Washington has leverage [regarding these textbooks]. Saudi Arabia is so eager to patch up its frayed alliance with the U.S. that the king’s son recently went so far as to vouch for the president’s “deep respect” for Islam and endorse his immigration policies. . . . Trump should point out that in 2006 the kingdom assured the U.S. that it would remove all remaining passages from the books that promote hatred or disparage other religions by 2008. . . .

It would also be fair to ask Riyadh to take other crucial steps against extremist indoctrination, such as to stop granting broadcast licenses to Salafist television channels that air hateful messages abroad and to stop granting government privileges to preachers who propagate intolerance.

Read more at Huffington Post

More about: Anti-Semitism, Politics & Current Affairs, Radical Islam, Saudi Arabia, 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