Why Did the British Prime Minister Vote against Israel? Virtue Signaling

While Charles Moore does not doubt the sincerity of Theresa May’s expressions of friendship toward the Jewish state, he finds her decision to support the recent anti-settlements resolution at the UN Security Council an unjustifiable exercise in “virtue signaling”—a meaningless display of commitment to popular pieties. He writes (free registration required):

“Virtue-signaling” is a useful modern term to describe a modern mania. Its greatest practitioner on the international stage is the outgoing president of the United States. Barack Obama has elevated virtue-signaling into a strategy—or rather, his substitute for a strategy. . . . [But he] is leaving office. He looks forward to his political afterlife touring the world as the saintly anti-American American, and he hates poverty, war, and injustice. The resolution will make some neat paragraphs in the final chapter of his memoirs.

What is harder to understand is why Theresa May’s Britain is choosing to indulge him. [On December 22,] Egypt dropped the resolution, deciding it would damage its relations with Israel and the incoming Trump presidency. This would have been our moment to kick the whole idea into touch. Instead, British diplomats reportedly helped do the Obama ancien régime’s work for it and put pressure on New Zealand to push the resolution forward. . . .

Britain, being a permanent member [of the Security Council], has the power of veto. Think how our use of that veto on this issue could have transformed the landscape of the international order at this time. . . .

Although the passing of Resolution 2334 could not have happened without President Obama, it would not have been seemly for him to signal his virtue too explicitly. So this was left to his Secretary of State, John Kerry. Kerry made an emotional speech on [December 28]. He criticized the Netanyahu administration for being “the most right-wing in Israel’s history with an agenda driven by the most extreme elements.” At which point, 10 Downing Street suddenly decided to get cross. A spokesman criticized Kerry, saying “We do not believe it is appropriate to attack the democratically-elected government of an ally.” He added that “We do not believe that the way to negotiate peace is by focusing on only one issue, in this case the construction of settlements.” He did not deal with the plain fact that the British government had just supported a resolution with exactly that focus on exactly that issue.

Some may see this as a welcome, if belated attempt by Mrs. May to make up for her government’s earlier mistake, though it would look more impressive if Britain were to refuse to attend the let’s-bash-Israel international conference in Paris announced for January 15. It could equally well be the prime minister’s effort to make the noises necessary to placate critics without altering the actual policy at all.

Read more at Telegraph

More about: Barack Obama, Israel & Zionism, Theresa May, United Kingdom, United Nations

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