Israel Could Face a Massive Earthquake, and It’s Not Prepared

Israeli policymakers spend much of their energy worrying about such immediate problems as Palestinian terror or the coronavirus, as well as even more troubling threats such as a major war with Hizballah, or Iran obtaining a nuclear bomb. But, argues Ariel Heimann, there is a danger, every bit as serious, that receives far less attention: that of a major earthquake in this small, densely populated country:

Israel is affected by the collisions of the African plate with the European plate, and mainly by the friction stemming from the motion between the Arabian plate east of Israel and the African plate, which includes Israel. Many earthquakes occur along this border between the plates, which stretches from the Red Sea and the Gulf of Eilat in the south, through the Jordan Valley, and until Turkey in the north.

In the past few centuries several strong earthquakes occurred in our region, including in 1759, 1837, and 1927. Each of them caused the deaths of dozens if not hundreds of people and considerable damage, even given the relatively small number of residents and structures in the country. For example, in the 1927 earthquake, Jerusalem, Jericho, Ramle, Tiberias, and Nablus were seriously damaged, and at least 500 people were killed.

Had Israel been as heavily populated then as it is today, the number of casualties would have been far higher. . . . A scenario that was presented to the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in 2016 estimated that about 7,000 people would be killed, 8,600 seriously injured, 28,600 buildings destroyed, . . . and 170,000 people evacuated from their homes for the long term. In such a scenario, Israel would have a high likelihood of entering a state of ongoing disaster.

But, writes Heimann, the news is not all bad, as there is much the Jewish state can do to be better prepared, and indeed it has already made some small but important steps in that direction.

Read more at Institute for National Security Studies

More about: Natural disasters

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