Gaza’s Fake Humanitarian Crisis

Thanks to Hamas’s assiduous propaganda, widely disseminated by journalists and human-rights organizations, it is widely assumed that the people of the Gaza Strip live in abject poverty and are hovering on the brink of a humanitarian crisis, created or exacerbated by an Israeli “blockade.” Not so, writes Hillel Frisch:

Gaza’s life expectancy of seventy-four is above both the world average (sixty-eight in 2010) and the average in the Arab states. This means that more than 3.8 billion people are living shorter, and probably harsher, lives than Gazans. . . . [Furthermore] life expectancy in Gaza has not declined, and the [Israeli] blockade no longer exists. . . . Even the electricity crisis in Gaza points to a high, and rising, standard of living. The crisis is partly the result of the gap between supply and increasing demand. . . .

So why is this myth so widespread? The answer lies with those who have a vested interest in perpetuating it. By far the most important of these is Hamas. The terrorist group taxes all incoming goods to pay the salaries of its 30,000 terrorists and the bureaucracy that feeds them, as well as for training, missile production, and the digging of tunnels into Israel. The budget supports 20,000 more on the public payroll whom Hamas has hired since 2007—mostly teachers who preach jihadism in Gaza’s public schools. Hamas hopes that claims of a humanitarian crisis will bring in more aid, more demand for goods, and a greater flow of goods, all of which it will tax for its own benefit.

Hamas is not the only culprit. The international “humanitarian” relief industry has an obvious stake in perpetuating the myth. In few places in the world can relief-agency workers live in a cosmopolitan hive like Tel Aviv, enjoy a world-class symphony orchestra, museums, and night life, and commute to the allegedly stricken areas. . . . Championing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is to champion a personal lifestyle at the expense of, [for instance], East African countries that need the aid much more desperately than Gaza.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza Strip, Hamas, Israel & Zionism, Palestinians

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