Israel’s Latest Energy Breakthrough with Greece and Cyprus

Last month, Jerusalem, Athens, and Nicosia concluded an agreement to create what would be the world’s longest and deepest underwater power cable, which will allow electricity to flow among the three countries, and connect Cyprus and Israel with the European power grid. Oved Lobel comments on the deal’s significance:

[T]he project’s political and strategic ramifications are difficult to overstate. Israel’s burgeoning energy and security partnership with Greece and Cyprus, which has qualitatively blossomed since 2017, will further anchor Israel’s importance for Europe and the Middle East.

Alongside the East Mediterranean Gas Forum (EMGF), the result of massive gas discoveries in the exclusive economic zones of Israel, Cyprus, and Egypt over the past decade, Israel’s centrality as a security and energy partner is now assured, particularly if the [proposed] EastMed Pipeline . . . is built, enabling Israel to export natural gas to Europe and linking Cyprus to the EU’s natural-gas network.

[T]here are a range of energy and security partnerships now coalescing in the eastern Mediterranean and drawing in a broader range of outside powers. This has accelerated since the signing of the Abraham Accords in 2020, including the United Arab Emirates—which acceded to the EMGF as an observer in late 2020—as well as the U.S., France, and now Saudi Arabia. Driving this expanding and deepening network of alliances and partnerships is Turkey, which has opted to threaten the key interests of virtually every country in the region and double down whenever challenged.

Read more at Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC)

More about: Cyprus, Greece, Israel diplomacy, Israeli gas

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