Support for the Lebanese Armed Forces Is Support for Hizballah

Last month, news broke that the U.S. was withholding military aid earmarked for Lebanon, inviting speculation about a putative policy shift in the Trump administration and then criticism by those who deemed such a shift ill-advised. The aid was released by December 2, and it turned out that the holdup was purely bureaucratic in nature. But, writes Tony Badran, the arguments put forth in favor of continued support for the Lebanese military remain unconvincing, and an actual change of policy would be welcome:

For the past seven years, as Hizballah prosecuted its war in Syria, the Lebanese military coordinated closely with it and protected the group’s rear and logistical routes. During battles in eastern Lebanon against Syrian militants in 2017, the Lebanese military deployed jointly with Hizballah and provided it with fire support, using U.S.-supplied munitions and systems.

When Israel uncovered Hizballah cross-border attack tunnels late last year, Lebanon’s military denied the United Nations interim force in the country access to the sites for inspection. Hizballah sites for upgrading rockets into precision missiles are situated near Lebanese military bases that receive U.S. aid.

With the eruption of protests in mid-October, backers of the aid [claimed that] supporting the Lebanese military is critical because it protects the protesters against attacks by Hizballah’s thugs. . . . In some cases, the Lebanese military [indeed] stood between protesters and [Hizballah] goons, although it did not disarm or arrest those goons. In other cases, it either stood aside and did nothing, especially in Shiite areas and in Beirut, or it actively broke up protests, forcibly reopened roads blocked by the demonstrators, or harassed, arrested, and roughed [them] up.

[More importantly, however], the statutory basis for U.S. aid is not grounded in whether Lebanese forces protect protesters, but in what the forces are doing to disarm Hizballah [as required by UN Security Council resolutions]: nothing. It’s not just because [particular] units or commanders are under Hizballah’s sway. It’s because the government and political order in which the Lebanese military operates is run by Hizballah. . . . The people in Lebanon today are protesting against this very political order, the same one U.S. policy is predicated on stabilizing and propping up.

Read more at Washington Examiner

More about: Hizballah, Lebanon, U.S. Foreign policy

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