Radical Islam, Anti-Semitism, and the Left

In an essay published earlier this year, the American political philosopher Michael Walzer strongly criticized his left-wing comrades for their blindness to the dangers of Islamism. In a recent discussion with a group of British thinkers and activists, he was asked why the left seems paralyzed by a fear of “encouraging Islamophobia” while having no such qualms about encouraging anti-Semitism. His reply:

[T]he fear of Islamophobia is related to the hostility to Israel. There is this eagerness— I’ve heard this often in America, I don’t know if it happens [in Britain]—to describe the Islamic minority in the U.S., or in Europe, as the “new Jews.” Somehow, that gives you license to ignore the “old Jews,” and to focus on these “new Jews,” and to claim that we must not repeat with them what we did to the “old Jews.” But that can lead to any criticism being interpreted as hostility to this minority and a way of targeting this minority. The argument becomes “if you are critical of Islam, you are joining hands with the new xenophobes of the West.”

Read more at Fathom

More about: Anti-Semitism, History & Ideas, Islamism, Islamophobia, Leftism, Michael Walzer

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