Reaffirming the Ground Rules for the U.S.-Israel Alliance

Last week, Jake Sullivan, the American national security advisor, announced that he is planning a visit to the Jewish state in order to meet with members of the new governing coalition. Meir Ben-Shabbat, who served in the equivalent position in the Israeli government from 2017 to 2021, suggests how Jerusalem should approach the key issues apt to be on the table when Sullivan arrives.

The special relations between the two nations and the bipartisan support Israel enjoys in the U.S. [constitute] an overarching interest for Israel. However, Israel is a sovereign country that formulates its policies on its own accord and in view of the responsibility that history has given it as the state of the Jewish people and with the realization that the struggle continues over its existence, stature, and security.

A strong Israel is a boon for the U.S. in various aspects: security-wise, technology-wise, and economically. Israel will therefore continue to use its power to defend itself and will not allow its existence to be threatened. The U.S. should at the very least have our back.

As for domestic issues, Prime Minister Netanyahu should make it clear that Israel is a vibrant and young democracy that sorts things out on hot-button issues through the democratic process. There is no room for meddling and foreign influence by any side.

Iran will certainly be high on Benjamin Netanyahu’s list of concerns, and most likely on Sullivan’s as well. Ben-Shabbat observes:

Iran’s activities in the Ukraine war and the failure to revive the 2015 deal provide an opportunity [for the U.S.] to change [its] policy toward Tehran. Europe might be more receptive to this than before. It’s important to take note that it would be wrong to assume that this new approach will drag the U.S. into war. In fact, such a policy will reduce the risk of a war breaking out in the Middle East over Iran’s continued efforts to implement its vision.

Read more at Israel Hayom

More about: Benjamin Netanyahu, Iran, U.S.-Israel relationship

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