The Perpetrator of Sunday’s Terror Attack Was No Lone Wolf

In the West Bank on Sunday, a Palestinian terrorist murdered a soldier and a civilian, and left another soldier in critical condition. Ron Ben-Yishai finds the reports that the perpetrator was a “lone wolf” less than entirely accurate:

[T]his was no ordinary lone-wolf attack; the perpetrator was unusually cold and calculated and likely had military training. We know this because [he] successfully approached [a group of] soldiers, . . . with his knife hidden on his person, drawing it only at the moment he fell upon his victim and stabbed him. [This careful execution is] presumably the reason the attack was so deadly. He also immediately knew how to make use of the gun he [then] snatched and was quite accurate in his shooting.

The terrorist seemingly planned his escape and seized the opportunity to flee when he saw a car abandoned by its driver. He drove to another location and opened fire there as well, before heading toward the Palestinian town of Burqin and abandoning the vehicle to seek hiding, probably realizing that he was better off on foot.

The evidence indicates that he was a member of a local terrorist organization drawing inspiration from Hamas. Perhaps he was even acting on behalf of Hamas, which has recently demonstrated an interest in fanning the flames of violence in the West Bank. Perhaps it is connected to events in Gaza where protests against the high cost of living are increasing. The Hamas department that oversees the West Bank was bombed by the IDF Friday, in response to the rockets launched at Tel Aviv Thursday night. They have good reason to show Israel that they are still up and about, and perhaps [this] terrorist was acting on their behalf.

Read more at Ynet

More about: Hamas, Israel & Zionism, Palestinian terror

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