It’s Not Israel That Deprives Palestinians of Human Rights

Recently a Gazan mother of six was imprisoned for 23 days, and possibly tortured, by Hamas before being released. Meanwhile, Ahed Tamimi, a young West Bank Palestinian who was arrested after physically assaulting two IDF soldiers, is serving an eight-month sentence in an Israeli jail. Bassam Tawil contrasts the two cases:

Tamimi has, since [her arrest], become a symbol of the Palestinian “struggle” against Israel. She is glorified by many in the mainstream media in the West and by advocates of Palestinian human rights around the world, who have turned her into an icon. Tamimi has won all this fame and glory because she and her family members have long been staging skirmishes with Israeli soldiers in their village of Nabi Saleh. The teenager and her parents have made it a habit to invite journalists—or anyone carrying a camera—to document their provocative actions against the soldiers.

Abu Ghayyath, however, the woman from the Gaza Strip, has been less fortunate than the golden girl from the West Bank. Unlike Tamimi’s arrest, [hers] did not spark an international outcry. . . . Had Abu Ghayyath been arrested by Israel, her name would have appeared on the front pages of the New York Times and in the broadcasts of the BBC and CNN. The only ones who picked up her ordeal and demanded her release, however, were a few Palestinian women’s groups and, of course, her family. Predictably, only a handful of Palestinians—and no Westerners—dared to denounce Hamas for arresting the woman.

Even after Abu Ghayyath’s release, it remains unclear why Hamas’s security forces arrested her in the first place. Some Palestinians speculated that she could have been taken into custody because of her affiliation with Hamas’s rivals in Fatah, the secular faction headed by the Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmud Abbas. Others believe she may have been arrested because of her activities on behalf of women’s rights in the Gaza Strip.

This is yet another reminder of the dangerous double standard of the international community. Where are all those who claim to be “pro-Palestinian” and are spewing hatred against Israel and Jews on college campuses in the U.S. and Canada? If they really want to help the Palestinians, let them stand up and shout about the rights of women and gays living under Hamas’s repressive regime, and journalists who are being harassed and arrested by Mahmud Abbas’s security forces. Yelling lies about Israel and Jews does not make one “pro-Palestinian.” It only makes one an Israel-hater. Hating Israel does not [protect the] the human rights [of] Palestinians living under Hamas and Fatah. Instead, it serves as a distraction and even facilitates Fatah and Hamas in suppressing public freedoms and human rights.

Read more at Gatestone

More about: Fatah, Hamas, Human Rights, Israel & Zionism, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 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