The Conspicuous Absence of the American President from the Israeli Election Campaign

In Israel’s elections last year, Likud billboards displayed pictures of Benjamin Netanyahu next to Donald Trump to highlight the incumbent prime minister’s success as a custodian of the alliance with the U.S. Such electioneering moves are not new, writes Shmuel Rosner; Israelis value their alliance with the U.S., and want a leader who will handle the alliance deftly. What’s more remarkable is that Joe Biden has not been much discussed in the lead-up to next week’s vote:

There’s a simple explanation, and a more complicated one, for this unusual absence. First, the simple: Israelis do not yet know whether President Biden will prove to be a friend, like his predecessor, or a thorn in their side, like the president he previously served under. Netanyahu cannot yet oppose him because so far he has done nothing objectionable, and alienating the White House for no good reason is beyond the pale. . . . The opposite is also true: Biden has not yet proved himself to be Israel’s friend as president, and so the prime minister’s rivals must be careful not to portray themselves as his admirers.

The more complicated explanation concerns America’s interest in the Middle East and the country’s relative irrelevance to much that is happening in the region. The United States was unsuccessful in its halfhearted quest to contain Iranian expansion; it was missing in action in the Syrian civil war; it bet on wrong horses during the so-called Arab Spring; it has alienated the Saudis, let Russia take over Libya, and did nothing of value to resolve the Palestinian issue. The list goes on.

If America’s leaders are just tired of being involved in Israel’s never-ending political process, I can’t fully blame them. We Israelis are all tired of it, too. . . . In more than one way, the policy of the Biden administration seems to be moving along a trajectory that assumes a less central role for Middle East affairs in America’s foreign policy. So it’s quite possible that Israel’s needs are becoming less urgent and that who leads Israel matters less in the eyes of the United States. In such case, the proper election question for Israelis is no longer “Which leader could better deal with America?” but “Which leader can better manage without America?”

Read more at New York Times

More about: Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump, Israeli Election 2021, Joseph Biden, US-Israel relations

 

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