Israel Still Suffers the Consequences of Its Departure from South Lebanon

From 1985 until 2000, the IDF maintained a buffer zone in southern Lebanon to prevent attacks on its territory by Hizballah and Palestinian groups. Ehud Barak, who withdrew Israeli forces from Lebanon during his tenure as prime minister, recently told an interviewer that he remains “very proud” of the decision. Meir Indor responds:

Barak [claimed] that he succeeded in “stopping what cost many soldiers their lives.” How dishonest and disrespectful is it to disregard the victims of the 2006 Second Lebanon War, who were casualties of that withdrawal? Here is the tally of the casualties: 165 Israeli civilians and soldiers killed and 2,628 injured. In that one war, Barak managed to surpass the number of lives [lost during the fifteen years in which Israel maintained the security zone]. . . .

[Furthermore], when then-Palestinian Authority president Yasir Arafat saw that the IDF was on the run under Barak’s leadership, he launched a terrorist offensive to kick [Israel] out of Judea and Samaria. Why would an older, more experienced terrorist follow the lead of Hizballah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah if the withdrawal were, [as Barak claims], a success? . . .

Meanwhile, Iran was in the background. Barak was warned [when he was considering withdrawal] that the Iranians wanted to build an army for the Shiites in Lebanon to threaten Israel from the north, in addition to the Palestinian threat from Hamas in the south. This is exactly what happened. It had been impossible for the Shiite terrorist group Hizballah to [organize itself into] an army, [which it now is], so long as the IDF remained in south Lebanon. . . . Hizballah militants even took over [Israeli] bases and appropriated weapons and equipment that was forgotten in the hasty rout [of the IDF]. Pictures of their victory with Hizballah flags raised were seen throughout the Arab world.

Read more at Israel Hayom

More about: Hizballah, Iran, Israel & Zionism, Lebanon, Second Intifada, Second Lebanon War

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