The Syrian Ceasefire and the Fate of One Captured Israeli Soldier

Earlier this week, the U.S. announced that it had successfully negotiated a ceasefire among various warring parties in Syria. Noting that the agreement is riddled with problems, Liel Leibovitz cites Israel’s experience with a previous American-brokered ceasefire as reason for further skepticism:

[E]ven putting aside the weakness of the specific Syria ceasefire terms, the Obama administration’s credibility with ceasefires has been, and remains, badly damaged. The reason for this precedent can be described with one name: Hadar Goldin.

Early in the morning of August 1, 2014, nearly a month into Hamas’s war on Israel, a 72-hour U.S.- and UN-brokered ceasefire took hold. Two hours into that ceasefire, Palestinian terrorists exploited the lull in the fighting to emerge into southern Israel from a Gaza attack tunnel. They immediately murdered two Israeli soldiers and abducted Goldin, almost certainly killing him as well. . . .

Now, however, more than a year after Goldin’s death, Hamas still refuses to return his body for burial in Israel, a blatant violation of international law and basic human decency alike. It’s also an embarrassment to the Obama administration, which had backed the lull that the Palestinians used to slip into Israel. . . .

If the Obama administration wants to be taken seriously as a force for diplomacy and peaceful resolution in Syria and elsewhere, it must show that it is serious about accountability, and that the warring factions currently slouching their way to the negotiations table have reason to trust that America’s word is solid. Goldin’s case is a great place to start.

Read more at Tablet

More about: Barack Obama, Israel & Zionism, Protective Edge, Syrian civil war, U.S. Foreign policy, US-Israel relations

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