At 5:30 Thursday morning, police knocked on the door of Dov Haiyun, an Israeli Conservative rabbi, and summoned him for questioning regarding his officiating at a wedding unregistered with the chief rabbinate—in violation of a 2013 statute enforcing the rabbinate’s monopoly on weddings and divorces. Before the police had a chance to interrogate him, Israel’s attorney general shut down the investigation and Haiyun was released. The incident provoked understandable outrage in the Israeli and American-Jewish press, which immediately presented readers with a simplistic narrative: the chief rabbinate, increasingly dominated by ultra-Orthodox rabbis with totalitarian impulses, detained (or “arrested” as some reports had it) a Conservative rabbi for performing a non-Orthodox wedding. Elli Fischer, who himself has performed a number of illegal weddings, seeks to set the record straight:

Nowhere in the [relevant] ordinances are Reform, Conservative, or Orthodox weddings mentioned. The law applies equally to any marriage that takes place outside of the auspices of Israel’s chief rabbinate, the body tasked by Israeli law with registering the marriages of Jews. In fact, given that the chief rabbinate does not recognize marriages that do not comport with its interpretation of “the Law of Moses and Israel,” it is likely that the law applies only to Orthodox weddings performed outside the chief rabbinate. This is the interpretation of Rabbi Uri Regev, Haiyun’s attorney. . . . It is impossible to know the scope of the law for certain because, in the five years since the passage of this law, no one has been imprisoned, fined, tried, indicted, or even arrested for violating it. . . .

[A rabbinic court] ordered an investigation into Haiyun not because of his affiliation with the Conservative movement but because, as Haiyun himself has said, he officiated at the wedding of someone whose status as a possible mamzer [or illegitimate child who is forbidden to marry under halakhah] was under investigation by the chief rabbinate. The fact is that Reform and Conservative rabbis have been conducting weddings in Israel for decades with impunity. According to a recent report, the number of Orthodox weddings that take place in Israel outside the chief rabbinate has increased dramatically as well in recent years. Together, these constitute only about 4 percent of Jewish weddings in Israel, but the numbers are on the rise. . . .

There are many good reasons to avoid marriage under the auspices of the chief rabbinate. In the present case . . . I perfectly understand why Haiyun, having been convinced that there is no taint [of halakhic illegitimacy], decided to officiate.

It is precisely because I encourage such weddings that I am baffled by the attempt, beginning with Haiyun himself, to turn this molehill into a mountain. I accuse those who [have responded by equating] Israel with Iran and Saudi Arabia, who have begun posting their own pictures as “WANTED” signs on social media, of distorting the reality, [which is] that the Israeli authorities have clearly chosen to look the other way. By making themselves out to be heroes and martyrs, they are . . . discouraging typical Israeli couples from taking this important step [by leading them to think they risk arrest]. By turning the issue into one of Conservative and Reform versus Orthodox, they undermine efforts to win the hearts and minds of traditional, observant, and ḥaredi Israelis—precisely those groups whose support is needed if there will ever be real change.

Earlier this month, an operative working for, or in conjunction with, Hizballah snuck across the Israel-Lebanese border and planted a sophisticated explosive near the town of Megiddo, which killed a civilian when detonated. On Thursday, another Iranian proxy group launched a drone at a U.S. military base in Syria, killing a contractor and wounding five American soldiers. The former attack appears to be an attempt to change what Israeli officials and analysts call the “rules of the game”: the mutually understood redlines that keep the Jewish state and Hizballah from going to war. Nadav Pollak explains how he believes Jerusalem should respond:

Israel cannot stop at pointing fingers and issuing harsh statements. The Megiddo attack might have caused much more damage given the additional explosives and other weapons the terrorist was carrying; even the lone device detonated at Megiddo could have easily been used to destroy a larger target such as a bus. Moreover, Hizballah’s apparent effort to test (or shift) Jerusalem’s redlines on a dangerous frontier needs to be answered. If [the terrorist group’s leader Hassan] Nasrallah has misjudged Israel, then it is incumbent on Jerusalem to make this clear.

Unfortunately, the days of keeping the north quiet at any cost have passed, especially if Hizballah no longer believes Israel is willing to respond forcefully. The last time the organization perceived Israel to be weak was in 2006, and its resultant cross-border operations (e.g., kidnapping Israeli soldiers) led to a war that proved to be devastating, mostly to Lebanon. If Hizballah tries to challenge Israel again, Israel should be ready to take strong action such as targeting the group’s commanders and headquarters in Lebanon—even if this runs the risk of intense fire exchanges or war.

Relevant preparations for this option should include increased monitoring of Hizballah officials—overtly and covertly—and perhaps even the transfer of some military units to the north. Hizballah needs to know that Israel is no longer shying away from conflict, since this may be the only way of forcing the group to return to the old, accepted rules of the game and step down from the precipice of a war that it does not appear to want.