Israel Shouldn’t Let Poland’s Holocaust Law Interfere with an Important Alliance

While Amnon Lord finds himself in agreement with the substance of Alternate Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s condemnation of a recent law passed by the Polish parliament ending any Jewish efforts to seek restitution for property stolen during and after the Holocaust, he argues against antagonizing Warsaw. It is better, Lord writes, “to be smart, not just right.”

The important thing . . . is that the Poland of today, despite its nationalism, is a type of ally—or it was until elements in Israel decided gradually to destroy relations with it. Cooperation with [Warsaw] in terms of military aviation is a cornerstone of [Israeli] national security. The Poles also buy weapons and other systems from us. Poland is an important potential partner for Israel, together with the member countries of the Visegrad Group (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia) in its effort to crack the West European bloc that holds anti-Israel views. Despite the desecration of Jewish gravestones in Poland, we can dare say that the Jews living there today are safer than the Jews living in France and some parts of the United States.

Read more at Israel Hayom

More about: Holocaust restitution, Israel diplomacy, Poland

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