The U.S. Tells the Truth about the Jewish Residents of the West Bank, and about International Law

Yesterday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced his department’s conclusion that the “establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not per-se inconsistent with international law.” He stressed that the decision would not prejudice any future agreements, and pointed to the imprudence of reducing Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians to a matter of international law, instead affirming the long-held U.S. position that only negotiations between the parties could bring about a solution. Caroline Glick comments:

In [Pompeo’s] words, “calling the establishment of civilian settlements inconsistent with international law has not advanced the cause of peace.” Of course it hasn’t. Placing a lie in the center of the discourse on the Palestinian conflict with Israel is no way to promote understanding and coexistence.

In the interest of promoting peace, Pompeo instead told the truth. Not only are Israeli settlements not illegal. Pompeo noted that they are arguably more justified than civilian settlements built in other disputed territories.

Pompeo’s statement, and indeed the Trump administration’s decision to publish its position now, represent a complete rebuke of the European Union. The EU has made its false determination that Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria are illegal as a [pretext] for its hostile, discriminatory, economic, and political policies towards Israel.

Israel’s own foreign ministry should take a lesson from the Trump administration. After a bitter, two-year bureaucratic and political fight, in 2017 Israel’s embassies worldwide published a paper that explained the legal validity of Israel’s settlements in Judea and Samaria. But unlike the Trump administration, the Israeli government has still not stated outright that international law is irrelevant to the cause of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Read more at Caroline Glick

More about: International Law, Settlements, US-Israel relations, West Bank

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