Charlottesville, Denouncing Political Violence, and the Left’s Guilt-by-Association Problem

Following the car-ramming attack by a neo-Nazi at the recent, violent protest in Charlottesville, many American conservatives made clear their disgust with the variety of racist groups gathered there. Many on both right and left also criticized the president for not being quicker and less equivocal in his condemnations. Yet, notes Ruthie Blum, many leftwing commentators “went even further, blaming not only Trump but the United States itself for the climate that led to the events in Virginia, with [one writer] arguing that ‘What Happened in Charlottesville Is All Too American.’” Blum wonders why the same premise of guilt by association doesn’t apply to the Palestinian Authority (PA):

PA schools and summer camps educate children to believe that murdering on behalf of the “liberation of Palestine”—and in the name of Allah—is not only honorable but worthy of glorification. PA imams preach jihad. PA sports arenas and tournaments are named after “martyred” terrorists, all of whose families receive a salary of more than $3,000 per month for life. . . .

Although Hamas, the terrorist organization that rules the Gaza Strip, is shunned by U.S. negotiators, Fatah, the party headed by the PA president Mahmoud Abbas, is considered a potential partner for peace with Israel.

Official Fatah social-media pages, however, openly laud and encourage “lone wolves” to arm themselves with knives and vehicles with which to slaughter Israelis whenever and wherever possible. . . . A Palestinian who uses his car as a deadly weapon is viewed by his peers and rulers as a hero. Physical violence is officially sanctioned and rewarded.

An American who commits violence is demonized by everyone other than a handful of hardcore bigots. Still, many in the U.S. consider America to be a racist country and the Palestinians worthy of stalwart support.

Read more at Gatestone

More about: Alt-Right, Donald Trump, neo-Nazis, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian terror, 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