Palestinian Clergy Use Easter to Condemn Israel

Since World War II, most Christian denominations have abandoned the intense anti-Jewish preaching that for so long permeated European churches in the weeks leading up to Easter. Yet among Palestinian clergy, and those in the West eager to give them a platform, this ugly tradition persists. Enia Krivine and Shannon Walsh write:

Christians are flourishing in Israel, yet before Easter, some members of the clergy exploited the period of heightened religious emotion to level false accusations of systemic oppression against Israel. Meanwhile, others spread conspiracy theories that mirror the blood-libel sermons taught about the Jews during Holy Week in previous centuries. The Palestinian archbishop Atallah Hanna, of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, has called for a Palestinian state “from the river to the sea”—meaning a state that replaces Israel, and described Zionism as diabolical and having no connection to God’s word and the Holy Books.

Some Christian religious leaders in Israel have expressed concerns that the Christian community in the Holy Land is dwindling. While this may be true in the Palestinian territories, the Christian population inside of Israel proper has been steadily growing since 1950. Moreover, according to a study by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, Christian citizens of Israel had lower unemployment rates than their Jewish counterparts, are more likely to pursue a higher education, and Christian women disproportionately seek advanced degrees in Israel.

While there has been an alarming uptick in crime targeting Christian clergy and holy sites over the past couple of years in Israel, accusations of a systemic attempt by the Israeli government or the Jewish Israeli majority to eradicate the Christians of Israel is misinformed at best, and deceitful at worst. These attacks have been perpetrated by fringe actors, both Muslim and Jewish, who seek to undermine the pluralistic nature of the state of Israel—a core value enshrined in Israeli law.

Read more at Algemeiner

More about: Anti-Semitism, Israeli Christians, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

 

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