A Fashion Magazine Goes All in for Anti-Semites

Such periodicals as Vogue, which once focused mostly on style, celebrity gossip, dating advice, and movie reviews, have in recent years waded into politics—especially of the left-wing variety. But the British version of the glossy magazine seems to have a particular fondness for anti-Semitic political activists, as Karen Bekker notes:

British Vogue, . . . which claims over 800,000 print readers and 3.2 million unique monthly online visitors, has put what it calls “an inspiring army of activists” on the cover of its September issue (arguably the most important issue of the year). Among the twenty activists the magazine chose to feature are Tamika Mallory and Angela Davis. The magazine called Mallory “one of the most vital activists of her generation” in a feature interview, and called Davis a “straight-up legend.”

In January of 2017, Tamika Mallory rose to prominence as one of four main leaders of the Women’s March, one of the largest political marches in U.S. history. It was not long afterwards, however, that news about her connection with Louis Farrakhan, . . . as well as her own anti-Semitic comments, began to slowly trickle out. . . . In April of 2018, she slandered the Antidefamation League as “CONSTANTLY attacking black and brown people.” . . . At the March’s very first leadership meeting, Mallory asserted . . . “that Jews were proven to have been leaders of the American slave trade.” . . . She also later accused “white Jews” of “upholding white supremacy”.

And then there is Angela Davis, an obsessive Israel hater who herself played a role in a 1970 domestic terror attack:

Davis has supported Rasmea Odeh, a member of the terrorist group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Odeh was convicted in Israel for the killing of two Hebrew University students, Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner. . . . The September cover is the third time this year that British Vogue has prominently featured Davis.

Read more at CAMERA

More about: Anti-Semitism, Louis Farrakhan, Media, PFLP, Women's March

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