A South African City Is about to Run Out of Water—Thanks to BDS

In 2016, a conference was scheduled to take place in South Africa regarding the looming water shortage in the southern part of the country, but agitation from the boycott, divest, and sanction movement (BDS) over the participation of the Israeli ambassador led to the conference’s cancellation. Since then the South African government has been reluctant to receive advice or aid from the Jewish state, which has shared its expertise in desalination and water conservation with numerous other countries. Now, writes Howard Feldman, residents of Cape Town expect that water in their city will be shut off in May:

Cape Town is set to be the first major [modern] city to run out of water. The city is experiencing the worst drought in its history. Residents are being asked to utilize less than 50 liters (thirteen gallons) per day, but it is unlikely that they will avoid “Day Zero,” the day the taps run dry. It is unimaginable what contingencies can be put in place to deal with the series of events that will follow that day. . . .

[In 2016], Radio Islam in South Africa celebrated the announcement [of the conference’s cancellation] by interviewing one Professor Patrick Bond, [who claimed that] what Israel has achieved [in terms of drought prevention] can be done by any child and all that Israel has done is practice “water apartheid” and steal Palestinian water. . . . He of course made no mention of desalination or the fact that Israeli cities recycle around 85 percent of their water. Nor did he mention any other achievement in Israel that has changed the ecology of the country for the better.

The fact that South Africa is experiencing one of the worst droughts in living memory, and that the situation is critical, is not a concern for those who hate Israel.

Read more at Times of Israel

More about: BDS, Israel & Zionism, South Africa, Water

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