While there is little doubt that New York state’s governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City’s mayor Bill de Blasio have singled out Orthodox enclaves in their enforcement of social-distancing regulations, the fact remains that some of these communities have at times taken insufficient measures to prevent the spread of the pandemic. A similar situation exists in Israel, where prominent ḥaredi rabbis have persisted in keeping schools and synagogues open against government advice. To Shmuel Rosner, the problem lies in the very virtues that have led Ḥaredim to flourish:

Ḥaredi Jews have large families and live in densely populated areas. This enhances their model of togetherness and separateness. It also makes them more vulnerable to the coronavirus. By and large, like many closed communities, ḥaredi Jews are suspicious of outside institutions. (Some of this is born of a long history of persecution.) When outsiders demanded they shut down schools or cancel weddings or stop attending their synagogues, many of the leaders were thinking that such a decree could come only from people who do not understand the importance of these practices. They refused to comply.

[It] is time for ḥaredi leaders to realize that their model of isolation from the larger public is becoming archaic. Not because it failed, but because it succeeded.

The ḥaredi model in Israel and the West over the past century was meant to keep a threatened enclave from being wiped out by a cultural tsunami. It was . . . designed for a weak group attempting to prevent decline. But as a model for a strong and thriving community it is flawed and dangerous.

Responding to critics of his argument, and in particular to one who compared the situation of Jews in American with that of the Israelites in pharaonic Egypt, Rosner writes:

It is time for the ḥaredi world to acknowledge its success and stop pretending that it is under threat of an imaginary pharaoh, be it the mayor of New York City of the coronavirus czar in Israel. You are no longer oppressed. And that is a good thing.

Stephen Daisley writes about the slaying of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim:

Yaron and Sarah were murdered in a climate of lies and vilification and hatred. . . . The more institutions participate in this collective madness, the more madness there will be. The more elected officials and NGOs misrepresent the predictable consequences of asymmetric warfare in densely populated territories, where much of the infrastructure of everyday life has a dual civilian/terrorist purpose, the more the citizenries of North America and Europe will come to regard Israelis and Jews as a people who lust unquenchably after blood.

The most intolerant anti-Zionism is becoming a mainstream view, indulged by liberal societies, more concerned with not conflating irrational hatred of Israel with irrational hatred of Jews—as though the distinction between the two is all that well defined anymore.

For years now, and especially after the October 7 massacre, the call has gone up from the pro-Palestinian movement to put Palestine at the heart of Western politics. To pursue the struggle against Zionism in every country, on every platform, and in every setting. To wage worldwide resistance to Israel, not only in Wadi al-Far’a but in Washington, DC. “Globalize the intifada,” they chanted. This is what it looks like.