India and Israel Share a Strategic Agenda, and the U.S. Can Benefit

Last month, Benjamin Netanyahu paid an official visit to India, reciprocating a summer 2017 visit to Israel by his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi. Efraim Inbar explains the geopolitical logic that brings the two countries together, and its significance:

Both [countries] have waged major conventional wars against their neighbors and have experienced low‐intensity conflict and terror, as they are both involved in protracted conflicts characterized by complex ethnic and religious components not always well understood by outsiders. Weapons of mass destruction are in the hands of their rivals.

Both regard parts of the Arab world as hubs for Islamic extremism—a common threat. Moreover, India fears the Pakistani nuclear arsenal might ultimately fall into the hands of Islamic radicals, while Israel sees the mix in Iran of Islamic zeal and nuclear ambitions as an existential threat. The offshoots of Islamic State threaten the stability of Egypt and Jordan—Israel’s neighbors—and are increasingly sources of concern in South and Southeast Asia. . . .

Washington is important for [both] Jerusalem and New Delhi. India, a major player in the international system, has [of late] improved its relations with the U.S. Nevertheless, New Delhi’s links with Jerusalem have the potential to smooth over some of the difficulties in dealing with the U.S. Working with Israel fits into Modi’s plan to deepen relations with the U.S. given the U.S.‐Israel friendship. . . .

Gradually, India has overcome its reservations about security cooperation with Israel— not only on counterterrorism, which preceded the establishment of diplomatic relations and has been conducted away from the public eye. . . . [It is] noteworthy that Modi’s trip to Israel was not “balanced” with a visit to the Palestinian Authority, indicating that India has decoupled its relations with Israel from its historical commitment to the Palestinian issue. India has even occasionally refrained from joining the automatic majority against Israel in international forums.

Read more at Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies

More about: Benjamin Netanyahu, India, Israel & Zionism, Israel diplomacy, 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