For Germany’s Foreign Minister, Defaming Israel Takes Priority over Diplomacy

Germany’s foreign minister, Sigmar Gabriel, had planned an official visit to the Jewish state last April on no less somber an occasion than Holocaust Memorial Day. Gabriel announced that while in Israel he would meet with representatives of Breaking the Silence and B’tselem—two “human-rights” organizations far more dedicated to defaming their country than to protecting anyone’s rights. In response, Prime Minister Netanyahu refused to meet with Gabriel as planned unless the foreign minister canceled these meetings—a decision applauded even by many Israeli opponents of Netanyahu. Thus Gabriel came to Israel, met with the two organizations’ representatives, but not with the prime minister. Gadi Taub comments:

Before the Gabriel affair few Israelis were aware of how popular it is in Germany to compare Israel with the Nazis. But one has to admit that it does have its own perverted psychological logic. If the Jews are now victimizers, not victims, does that not partially alleviate the terrible burden of German guilt? . . . By refusing Netanyahu’s request and lending his support to organizations bent on demonizing Israel, Gabriel made many wonder whether he was not in fact engaged in exactly this kind of politico-psychological game, which may appeal to his own constituency at home. . . .

[In fact], upon his return to Germany, Gabriel said to the Frankfurter Rundschau that the Social Democrats, his own party, were, along with the Jews, among “the first victims of the Holocaust” (this was later changed on the paper’s website . . . to “the first victims of the Nazis”). So after using his state visit to look at Israel through the lens of organizations emphasizing our sins, and thus classifying us as victimizers, was he now making himself the victim (by proxy), and not just any victim, but a victim of Nazism? Where was all this heading? It brought to mind the bitterly sarcastic quip attributed to the Israeli psychiatrist Zvi Rex: “The Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz.” . . .

All this, we should note, was carried on in the guise of high-handed—and decidedly condescending—rhetoric. Gabriel, by his own account, was helping to instruct us about the dangers of nationalism—Israel’s—and the virtues of “European values” and democracy. But despite the immaculately humanitarian vocabulary, it was not hard to sense that something very sinister was afoot, since the minister’s interest in malignant nationalism and human rights seemed to be selective. He was apparently more interested in cases where Israel could be blamed. He had no plans to meet any civil-society organizations that document Palestinian abuses of human rights, and his high-minded exhortations against Jewish nationalism were not matched by any criticism of the murderous sort of xenophobic nationalism that the Palestinians habitually—and institutionally—encourage in their people, especially their young.

Read more at Fathom

More about: Anti-Semitism, Benjamin Netanyahu, Breaking the Silence, Germany, Israel & Zionism, Israeli-German 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