Will No One Stop Islamic State’s War on Egyptian Christians?

Last month, Islamic State (IS) attacked a group of Coptic Christians returning from a religious retreat in rural Egypt; an American citizen was among the 28 murdered. This was just the latest in a bloody two-year terror campaign that jihadists have been waging against the country’s principal religious minority. Nina Shea writes:

Islamic State’s Egyptian franchise, led by local extremists, aims to attract the country’s Sunni Muslim population not by playing up the country’s economic grievances or Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians but by portraying the Copts as a fifth column of so-called infidels in their midst. Despite the fact that the Copts do not have militias of their own, IS propaganda from last March accused them of receiving “huge” amounts of cash and weapons, and aspiring to take control over rich areas in Egypt in order to create their independent Christian state, “which is similar to the Jewish Zionist state.” . . .

Although the Copts are supposed to be equal [to Muslims] under Egyptian law, in practice they are often treated like second-class citizens. They are widely disparaged and discriminated against in the official textbooks, state-controlled media, and government-supported mosques, as well as in the administration of justice and access to important government jobs. This in turn fosters a culture of violence against them. An example last year involved Coptic schoolchildren who taped a 30-second cellphone video of themselves mocking IS. After angry mobs rioted at their homes, they and their teacher were arrested and sentenced up to five years in prison for blasphemy. . . .

IS has already cleansed northern Sinai of its small Christian population. As it attempts to terrorize millions of Copts away from the rest of Egypt through suicide and other attacks, massive refugee flows into Israel, Jordan, and across the Mediterranean into Europe could follow. The Egyptian military could be forced to fight an asymmetrical war against IS and other extremists in Alexandria, Cairo, Giza, Minya, and other areas where Copts live, damaging the largest Arab country’s already struggling economy and fragile social fabric. Eventually the polarization within the Muslim community could even lead to open civil war along ideological lines. There should be no confusion: the fate of the Copts is now the main measure of the effectiveness of Sisi’s anti-IS policies. The world needs to be playing close attention.

Read more at Hudson

More about: Copts, Egypt, General Sisi, ISIS, Middle East Christianity, Politics & Current Affairs

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