In Israel, the Knesset has been fiercely debating proposals that will extend military conscription to large numbers of Haredim who are currently exempt. Amid the renewed tensions over the issue, one of the leaders of the non-hasidic Haredim, Rabbi Dov Landau, stated in an interview that Arab rule over what is now Israel would be “quite good,” although Landau imagines that in this situation the new rulers of the Holy Land would “respect” and “not interfere with” the Zionists. Landau’s widely reported comments received praise from a segment of the Israeli left, and shock from everyone else.

Analyzing both Landau’s words and the increasing tensions over conscription, the haredi rabbi, jurist, and intellectual Yehoshua Pfeffer writes:

First, the average haredi individual recognizes Israel’s unprecedented support for the rebuilding of the Torah world. Notwithstanding deep reservations concerning the Jewish state, we all know that no Arab equivalent would have ingathered the Jewish exile. . . . Indeed, public-opinion surveys consistently show that haredim are the most right-wing group in the country—that is, the most nationalistic. They support a “Jewish state”—both in the sense of statehood and Jewish character.

[In fact], large portions of haredi society . . . see the Israeli story as their own—not a perfect story, far from it, but one whose next chapters they bear responsibility for writing.

That increasing sense of Israeliness may in the long run shape how Haredim respond to the issue of conscription:

Haredim have become a significant burden on the state, particularly in the economic sphere. . . . Moreover, the issue of basic morality and fairness has come to the fore, especially since October 7. Non-haredi Israelis have taken up the claim of [the sons of] Laban against the patriarch Jacob: “He has taken all that belonged to our father and created all this wealth” (Genesis 31:1)—or in modern terms, there can be no rights without duties.

While I’ve seen much speculation—some reasonable and well informed, some quite the opposite—about why Jerusalem chose Friday morning to begin its campaign against Iran, the most obvious explanation seems to be the most convincing. First, 60 days had passed since President Trump warned that Tehran had 60 days to reach an agreement with the U.S. over its nuclear program. Second, Israeli intelligence was convinced that Iran was too close to developing nuclear weapons to delay military action any longer. Edward Luttwak explains why Israel was wise to attack:

Iran was adding more and more centrifuges in increasingly vast facilities at enormous expense, which made no sense at all if the aim was to generate energy. . . . It might be hoped that Israel’s own nuclear weapons could deter an Iranian nuclear attack against its own territory. But a nuclear Iran would dominate the entire Middle East, including Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, with which Israel has full diplomatic relations, as well as Saudi Arabia with which Israel hopes to have full relations in the near future.

Luttwak also considers the military feats the IDF and Mossad have accomplished in the past few days:

To reach all [its] targets, Israel had to deal with the range-payload problem that its air force first overcame in 1967, when it destroyed the air forces of three Arab states in a single day. . . . This time, too, impossible solutions were found for the range problem, including the use of 65-year-old airliners converted into tankers (Boeing is years later in delivering its own). To be able to use its short-range F-16s, Israel developed the “Rampage” air-launched missile, which flies upward on a ballistic trajectory, gaining range by gliding down to the target. That should make accuracy impossible—but once again, Israeli developers overcame the odds.