In the Face of Terror, Israel’s New Arab Allies Show Solidarity

Yesterday and the day before, Israel hosted an unprecedented summit, attended by the foreign ministers of Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Egypt, along with the U.S. secretary of state. But as the delegates gathered, two Islamic State-connected terrorists opened fire at passersby on the streets of the northern town of Hadera, killing two and injuring several others. While the Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad hailed the attack as a “heroic response to the summit of humiliation and shame,” David Horovitz notes that, if anything, the shooting spree strengthened the resolve of Israel’s Arab allies:

One after another, in their public statements at the formal conclusion of their talks on Monday afternoon, Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and his four Arab counterparts condemned the latest instance of the deadly terrorism with which all of their countries grapple, and then swiftly moved on to stress their shared determination to build a unified front against extremism.

Three of the four Arab foreign ministers—Bahrain’s Abdullatif bin Rashid al-Zayani, Egypt’s Sameh Shoukry, and Morocco’s Nasser Bourita—took a few moments in their brief speeches to highlight the need to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. [Only] the U.S. secretary of state Antony Blinken went further, declaring that the Abraham Accords that brought these ministers together were no substitute for progress on the Palestinian front.

But this gathering, determinedly undeterred by terrorism, was a confident, unabashed display of normalization with Israel—of acceptance of Israel, legitimization of Israel—held adjacent to the final resting place of Israel’s first prime minister.

And just as Blinken appeared to be reading from a somewhat discordant script with his familiar comments about the Palestinian conflict, he was also the rather off-message participant when it came to confronting Iran. . . . The Negev summit, and the new, open alignment of these four Arab countries with Israel, is principally designed to facilitate better cooperation—practical, life-saving cooperation—to tackle the Iranian threat.

Read more at Times of Israel

More about: Abraham Accords, Antony Blinken, ISIS, Israel-Arab relations, Palestinian terror

 

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