Although David Ben-Gurion envisioned the Jewish state as a melting pot, with ingathered exiles merging together into a common Labor-Zionist culture, today’s increasingly conventional wisdom envisions a pluralistic society comprising various “tribes.” This view, as Yehoshua Pfeffer puts it, imagines “Arab sheikhs sitting side by side with ḥaredi scholars, feminist women next to settlers, and LGBT activists sharing a table with ḥasidic rabbis.” Yet Ḥaredim, even as they benefit from this multicultural arrangement, don’t subscribe to its underlying liberal assumptions. And that might be a good thing, Pfeffer argues:

Will Ḥaredim imitate Israel’s Arab parties, seeing the majority as an oppressive hegemony bent on silencing their voice and pushing them aside, or will they adopt a mindset of national and civil responsibility, without giving up communal independence and the unique ḥaredi lifestyle? . . .

On the one hand, there are built-in tensions between the ḥaredi worldview and [both] Israeli nationalism . . . and liberal culture. These tensions and differences lead some ḥaredi sub-groups to utilize the strategies of other minorities, identifying as one of Israel’s “tribes” and speaking the language of multiculturalism and minority rights.

On the other hand, ḥaredi society holds a profound faith that the Jewish people is a single entity with one common goal. These feelings of fraternity are deeply rooted in Jewish tradition. The average ḥaredi person cares deeply about all parts of Israeli society, and strongly identifies with the state of Israel as the national representative of the Jewish people. . . . Skimming through any ḥaredi newspaper reveals a large measure of pride in Israel’s security and economic achievements, as well as pain over its educational and cultural failures. . . .

Thanks to changes taking place both in ḥaredi society and in Israel generally, more Ḥaredim than ever are involved in projects and initiatives—in the workforce, in education, and in civil society—that bring them into cooperation with non-Ḥaredim. They feel a sense of responsibility . . . that originates in feelings of fraternity and mutuality.

While I’ve seen much speculation—some reasonable and well informed, some quite the opposite—about why Jerusalem chose Friday morning to begin its campaign against Iran, the most obvious explanation seems to be the most convincing. First, 60 days had passed since President Trump warned that Tehran had 60 days to reach an agreement with the U.S. over its nuclear program. Second, Israeli intelligence was convinced that Iran was too close to developing nuclear weapons to delay military action any longer. Edward Luttwak explains why Israel was wise to attack:

Iran was adding more and more centrifuges in increasingly vast facilities at enormous expense, which made no sense at all if the aim was to generate energy. . . . It might be hoped that Israel’s own nuclear weapons could deter an Iranian nuclear attack against its own territory. But a nuclear Iran would dominate the entire Middle East, including Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, with which Israel has full diplomatic relations, as well as Saudi Arabia with which Israel hopes to have full relations in the near future.

Luttwak also considers the military feats the IDF and Mossad have accomplished in the past few days:

To reach all [its] targets, Israel had to deal with the range-payload problem that its air force first overcame in 1967, when it destroyed the air forces of three Arab states in a single day. . . . This time, too, impossible solutions were found for the range problem, including the use of 65-year-old airliners converted into tankers (Boeing is years later in delivering its own). To be able to use its short-range F-16s, Israel developed the “Rampage” air-launched missile, which flies upward on a ballistic trajectory, gaining range by gliding down to the target. That should make accuracy impossible—but once again, Israeli developers overcame the odds.