The Emerging Hamas-Houthi Alliance Threatens Both Israel and Arab States

Last week, Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the Hamas politburo, sent a letter to the leaders of the Yemenite Houthi rebels—a group whose motto is “Allah is great; death to America; death to Israel; curse the Jews; victory to Islam!”—calling for an alliance. Khaled Abu Toameh, noting that the two groups are backed by Iran to varying degrees, comments:

Haniyeh’s letter to the Houthi leadership is clearly part of Hamas’s effort to enlist the Yemeni group for attacks on Israel. Hamas seems to be hoping that its alliance with the Houthi movement might stop some Arab countries from normalizing their relations with Israel.

Hamas’s leaders have repeatedly expressed deep concern over the apparent rapprochement between some Gulf states and Israel. . . . Some Arabs. [however], are now voicing extreme unease over the cooperation between Hamas and the Houthi movement. They say it would strengthen Iran’s terrorist proxies and cause a further deterioration of the situation in war-torn Yemen.

The “price” Iran is demanding for its financial and military aid is that Hamas remain a loyal proxy and carry out all instructions it receives from Tehran, including meddling in the internal affairs of Arab states and launching terrorist attacks against Israel.

The Hamas-Houthi alliance also shows that Iran is seeking to expand the terrorist activities of its agents in the Gaza Strip, Yemen. and Lebanon not only against Israel and the U.S., but against Arab and Islamic states as well.

Read more at Gatestone

More about: Hamas, Iran, Middle East, Yemen

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