How an Organization Tied to a Palestinian Terrorist Group Put a Bill Before Congress

Currently the Palestinian branch of Defense for Children International—an organization founded in 1979 to combat the human trafficking of minors—is running a “no way to treat a child” campaign to combat fictitious mistreatment of Palestinian children by the IDF. The group, which goes by the acronym DCI-P, has exploited its connection with its parent organization to receive funding and other support from EU institutions and such Western philanthropies as the American Friends Service Committee. But, as Emily Benedek details, DCI-P has such extensive links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)—the group responsible for the Lod Airport massacre, the hijacking of an Air France flight to Entebbe, and many other acts of terror—that it could reasonably described as the PFLP’s propaganda arm:

The Palestinian branch of DCI, DCI-P, founded in 1991, asserts that although it has pledged to “follow DCI’s mandate to ‘promote and protect children’s rights in accordance with international standards,’” it reserves the right to go its own way, by “autonomously” developing its own programs. . . .

The relationship [between DCI-P and the PFLP was likely] unknown [to] Congresswoman Betty McCollum of Minnesota, who sponsored a bill about Palestinian children that was largely written by DCIP. McCollum introduced this bill in November 2017—HR-4391, “The Promoting of Human Rights by Ending Israeli Military Detention of Palestinian Children Act”—which would prohibit “U.S. assistance to Israel from being used to support the military detention, interrogation, or ill-treatment of Palestinian children in violation of international humanitarian law.”

What the PFLP has not achieved through terror alone, it may now be attempting to achieve through the manipulation of international aid organizations and the language of humanitarian concern for the welfare of children.

Read more at Tablet

More about: Congress, EU, Israel & Zionism, NGO, Palestinian terror, PFLP

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