How Egypt and Israel Saved Their Alliance

After the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, there was serious concern in Israel and the U.S. about whether Egypt’s alliance with the Jewish state would survive. Although there was indeed some initial distancing between the two countries, especially during the time the Muslim Brotherhood was ensconced in Cairo, ties now seem to be stronger than ever. Mohamed Soliman, however, points to the alliance’s Achilles heel (free registration required):

However open the [current government under President Sisi] might be to a better relationship with Israel, the Egyptian public is still very wary. . . . [R]ecent polling . . . indicates that most of the Egyptian public is still hostile [toward the Jewish state]. Israel received an 88-percent disapproval rating, making it the most disliked country in the survey.

As Sisi focuses Cairo’s attention on the fight against political Islam, there is reason to believe that Israel will have a partner in Egypt for the foreseeable future. But the state of Egyptian-Israeli relations remains a work in progress in the court of public opinion. The Egyptian-Israel relationship is growing as military cooperation has extended into a larger political and diplomatic alliance. Egypt’s transfer of two Red Sea islands [to the Saudis] will help Israel open itself to its undeclared ally in Saudi Arabia. Sisi perceives Israel as a strong ally in his war against the Islamist organizations in the Sinai. Now it up to the Egyptian public to determine that this partnership is a good one, too.

Read more at Foreign Affairs

More about: Egypt, General Sisi, Hosni Mubarak, Israel & Zionism, Israel diplomacy, Mohamed Morsi

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