Commemorating the Australian Aborigines Who Fought to Liberate the Land of Israel from the Ottoman Empire

Last Wednesday, a ceremony was held in the town of Tzemaḥ, near the Sea of Galilee, unveiling a sculpture in commemoration of the battle that took place there in 1918 when Australian cavalrymen—many of whom were Aborigines—stormed a German position as part of the larger struggle between Britain and the Ottomans for control of the land. Ofer Aderet describes the encounter. (Free registration may be required.)

Under the cover of darkness, [guided] only by the light of the moon, the Australian cavalry drew their swords and galloped toward the local train station, a strategic point in those days. The German enemy, allied with the Ottoman empire, had barricaded itself in the stone station building. But the Australians, fighting for the British crown, were undeterred. They surged forward aloft on their steeds and . . . fought face to face with bayonet and sword.

The fighting ended at 5:30 AM, shortly after dawn. About 100 German soldiers were dead and many more were injured. Hundreds were captured. The Australians paid a price, too: fourteen dead, dozens injured, and half their horses would never gallop again.

Jack Pollard, a grandson of one of the fighters, came to Tzemaḥ to inaugurate a statue, The Aborigine and His Horse, commemorating his grandfather and dedicated to all the Aborigine soldiers who fell during World War I. The sculpture depicts [the elder] Pollard holding a Bible and bending over the grave of his brother in arms. The horse in the rear also bows its head toward the fresh grave. The statue was designed by an Australian artist and manufactured using a 3-D printer.

About two years ago, during the centennial of World War I, James Lingwoodock, grandson of one of the Aborigine fighters [who fought in the Palestine campaign] visited Israel. Alongside other descendants of the fighters, he participated in reenactments of the battles.

Read more at Haaretz

More about: Australia, World War I

 

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