Mahmoud Abbas’s Outburst in Berlin Highlights a German Problem

Few who have followed the career of the Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas were surprised that, while visiting Berlin last week, he not only refused to apologize for a Palestinian terrorist group’s massacre of Israeli athletes in Munich 50 years ago, but ranted about the “50 Holocausts” perpetrated by the Jewish state against Arabs. More telling, writes Ben Cohen, was the reaction of the German chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose country spends hundreds of millions of dollars every year propping up the PA:

As many German media outlets observed, Scholz did not contradict Abbas at the podium and even shook hands with him at the close of the press conference. At the same time, Scholz looked visibly angry with Abbas, and later on reportedly berated his staff for ending the press conference before he’d had an opportunity to respond. One day later, smarting from the media criticism, he labeled Abbas’s comments “disgusting” and apologized during a phone call with the Israeli prime minister Yair Lapid.

But sniping at Abbas after giving him a pass in front of the world’s press is not what a principled leader should do. . . . If Scholz wants to repair the reputational damage wrought by Abbas, he needs to make the fight against anti-Semitism a personal priority. Simply put, anti-Semitism is rife these days in Germany. In 2021, more than 3,000 anti-Semitic hate crimes were recorded—likely just the tip of the iceberg even though the [Jewish] community numbers fewer than 120,000 souls to begin with.

Germany cannot claim to be the guardian of the integrity of the Holocaust and then allow diplomatic protocol to shield a Holocaust denier like Abbas. In the same vein, German politicians can no longer be allowed to present yet more Holocaust memorials or emotional speeches embracing Jews as a substitute for grappling with a major social problem. What is needed are actions. Germany should condition funding to the Palestinians upon a commitment—from Abbas downwards—to refrain from Holocaust abuse and to end anti-Semitic incitement. . . .

If that can’t happen, then at least save us from the empathy-drenched speeches that sound more and more hollow at every instance.

Read more at JNS

More about: Anti-Semitism, Germany, Holocaust denial, Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian Authority

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