Europe Won’t Solve Its Anti-Semitism Problem by Expanding Bans on “Hate Speech”

Not having, or desiring, American-style guarantees of freedom of expression, European countries tend to have laws prohibiting what has come to be known as “hate speech.” Recently, some have advocated expanding these laws to include the most vicious forms of anti-Israel rhetoric. Ben Cohen argues against such an approach:

Meeting last week with a group of visiting American Jews, the head of the city government in Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, informed them that she had submitted an amendment to the European Union’s comprehensive strategy to combat anti-Semitism that would criminalize calls for Israel’s destruction. While the exact details of the proposal have not been explained, it’s reasonable to assume that a slogan like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which is precisely a call for Israel’s destruction, would theoretically fall foul of the law.

Not every aspect of this problem is so easily analyzed, however. . . . Those academics and pundits who demean Israel as an apartheid state, carefully [claiming] at the same time that they scorn anti-Semitism in all its forms, will not be silenced by such measures and will wear any bans or restrictions as a badge of pride.

Rather than seeking to criminalize anti-Zionism in toto, European governments would be better off carving out those aspects that can uncomplicatedly be dealt with by the law, such as preventing the public display of Hizballah or Hamas flags on the grounds that these incite violence and promote anti-Semitic organizations, and allow civil society to adjudicate the broader political debates.

Additionally, the cause of defending Israel would be severely compromised, perhaps fatally, by the shuttering of anti-Zionist associations’ . . . clamping down on the free speech of Israel’s adversaries sends the signal, however much we might wish otherwise, that the Jewish state’s allies have lost the argument.

Read more at JNS

More about: Anti-Zionism, Europe and Israel, Freedom of Speech, Spain

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