Labor’s Temporary Rejection of the Two-State Solution

Isaac Herzog, leader of Israel’s Labor party, recently declared in an interview that he sees the creation of a Palestinian state as desirable in the long run but impossible under current conditions. Were he to become prime minister, Herzog explained, he would focus on short-term measures to improve Israeli security and Palestinian quality of life. Jonathan Tobin notes the implications of this dramatic shift, especially for U.S.-Israeli relations:

Unlike Americans who simply ignore any evidence about the conflict that doesn’t validate their preexisting assumptions, Israelis are aware that their so-called peace partners are both inciting and applauding the most gruesome acts of terrorism. Moreover, they have noticed that Palestinians don’t seem to draw any distinction between Jews sitting in a Tel Aviv café and those living in a West Bank settlement. For them, all are ripe targets for murder, and those who commit such atrocities are considered heroes.

This is an important point American Jewish left-wingers who pose as experts about Israel steadfastly refuse to acknowledge. It also illustrates how pointless the Obama administration’s efforts to pressure Israel have been. . . . No one should expect these facts to influence Israel’s critics. But they ought to have some impact on those vying for the presidency in both parties. The next president’s task will be to repair the “daylight” damage Obama has done. But he or she should also be willing to tell the world that there will be no more talk of two states until the Palestinians give up their dreams of Israel’s destruction and cease terrorism.

Read more at Commentary

More about: Isaac Herzog, Israel & Zionism, Israeli politics, Labor Party, Two-State Solution

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