Israeli Paratroopers Discover an Ancient Observation Tower on Their Base

According to archaeologists, a recently unearthed lookout post—located in what is now an IDF base in southern Israel—was built during the reign of King Hezekiah, near the end of the 8th century BCE. The Jerusalem Post reports:

“The strategic location of the tower served as a lookout and warning point against the Philistine enemy, one of whose cities was Ashkelon,” said Valdik Lifshitz and Sa’ar Ganor, directors of the excavation on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority. The tower was estimated to be about 16.4 by 11.5 feet. “In the days of the First Temple, the kingdom of Judah built a range of towers and fortresses as points of communication, warning, and signaling to transmit messages and field intelligence.”

The messages would be transmitted though smoke and fire, depending the time of the day.

The [excavation] was carried out by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority in a joint effort with the IDF and the Ministry of Defense. . . . Some 150 recruits and commanders from the paratroopers’ brigade participated. . . . Part of the IDF’s involvement in the project was to instill in soldiers and commanders a sense of connection to Israel’s heritage and natural landscape.

Read more at Jerusalem Post

More about: Ancient Israel, Archaeology, Hezekiah, IDF

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