Why the War in Libya Matters to Israel and the West

On April 4, the Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar launched a major offensive from his stronghold in the eastern part of the country to take Tripoli from the Islamist government ensconced there. His attack has since bogged down in heavy fighting. Jonathan Spyer examines the implications of this ongoing civil war, which he understands as a conflict between two regional alliances:

Haftar and his Libyan National Army (LNA) have benefited since 2014 from the support of Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The UAE, according to regional media reports, has carried out air and drone strikes in support of the LNA. Egyptian and Emirati provision of funding, arms, and equipment is crucial to Haftar’s efforts. In the period immediately preceding the launch of his offensive, Haftar appears also to have secured the support of Saudi Arabia. . . . Haftar is thus the ally and client of those broadly Western-aligned, authoritarian Arab states that find a common enemy in the Sunni political Islam of the anti-Western Muslim Brotherhood and its allies.

On the other side, Turkey and Qatar (and the now-deposed Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir) are strongly supportive of the Islamist and Muslim Brotherhood-associated elements that share power with the government in Tripoli. . . . Ankara and Doha seek to expand and deepen their regional influence through support for Sunni Islamist political and military organizations. This pattern may also be observed, of course, in Syria, the Palestinian territories, and Iraq.

It is worth noting that Haftar and his forces are currently in the unusual position of enjoying the tacit support of both Russia and the U.S. . . . Israel’s position in the regional contest between Western-aligned authoritarianism and Sunni political Islam is also not ambiguous. What is good for Sisi and bad for the Muslim Brotherhood and Erdogan is likely to be welcomed in Jerusalem. It remains far from certain, however, if any such neat outcome will occur. Libya may well continue to share the fate of Syria, Yemen and, to a lesser extent, Iraq: . . . namely, fragmentation, chaos, and ongoing proxy war.

Read more at Jonathan Spyer

More about: Islamism, Libya, Middle East, Qatar, Turkey

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