On Wednesday night, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant urged the government to end draft exemptions for Haredim. This long-controversial issue has come to the fore with a new urgency amid a post-October 7 eruption of good feeling between Haredim and non-Haredim. Indeed, Gallant in the same speech made a point of saying, “We cherish and appreciate those who dedicate their lives to learning the Torah.” Yitzchok Adlerstein, an American-born, moderate Haredi rabbi, recently wrote about the subject on a blog aimed to a strictly Orthodox audience:

The IDF is strapped for manpower. It is removing future recruits from training programs that were to give them months more preparation (including Torah study in the religious programs), because they are needed now on the front. The term of service has been extended for both regular service and the annual service in reserve units. In other words, a heavy burden has just been made even heavier.

It does not seem so likely that the default response of our [haredi] community—sit back, weather the storm, and watch it blow over—is going to work. There is a distinct danger that if we don’t come up with some reasonable proposal, others may impose one. There are several signs that this may be the case. First, as mentioned, the mood of the country has shifted. Ironically, this is at a time that many who were not sympathetic at all to Torah or Haredim have become much more so in the spirit of unity, and the general move to [greater religious faith] since October 7. Despite the softening of hostility towards Haredim, insistence on some “sharing of the burden” is also gaining strength.

If the yeshivah world fails to offer any proposal at all regarding the draft situation, it may find itself even more isolated than before, and more fiercely targeted by non-Haredim, despite the good will generated in recent months. This would be especially ironic, given that . . . the way Haredim relate to the IDF has shifted toward much greater appreciation and gratitude than before. In other words, we are so close—and yet so far.

Addressing a recent meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central Committee, Mahmoud Abbas criticized Hamas more sharply than he has previously (at least in public), calling them “sons of dogs.” The eighty-nine-year-old Palestinian Authority president urged the terrorist group to “stop the war of extermination in Gaza” and “hand over the American hostages.” The editors of the New York Sun comment:

Mr. Abbas has long been at odds with Hamas, which violently ousted his Fatah party from Gaza in 2007. The tone of today’s outburst, though, is new. Comparing rivals to canines, which Arabs consider dirty, is startling. Its motivation, though, was unrelated to the plight of the 59 remaining hostages, including 23 living ones. Instead, it was an attempt to use an opportune moment for reviving Abbas’s receding clout.

[W]hile Hamas’s popularity among Palestinians soared after its orgy of killing on October 7, 2023, it is now sinking. The terrorists are hoarding Gaza aid caches that Israel declines to replenish. As the war drags on, anti-Hamas protests rage across the Strip. Polls show that Hamas’s previously elevated support among West Bank Arabs is also down. Striking the iron while it’s hot, Abbas apparently longs to retake center stage. Can he?

Diminishing support for Hamas is yet to match the contempt Arabs feel toward Abbas himself. Hamas considers him irrelevant for what it calls “the resistance.”

[Meanwhile], Abbas is yet to condemn Hamas’s October 7 massacre. His recent announcement of ending alms for terror is a ruse.

Abbas, it’s worth noting, hasn’t saved all his epithets for Hamas. He also twice said of the Americans, “may their fathers be cursed.” Of course, after a long career of anti-Semitic incitement, Abbas can’t be expected to have a moral awakening. Nor is there much incentive for him to fake one. But, like the protests in Gaza, Abbas’s recent diatribe is a sign that Hamas is perceived as weak and that its stock is sinking.