A New Crypto-Boycott of Israel

A group of left-wing American intellectuals, styling themselves the “Third Narrative,” have called for a “personal” boycott aimed at Israeli politicians whom they strongly dislike, most prominently Naftali Bennett, leader of the Jewish Home party. Although they claim to oppose the movement to boycott Israel, and mostly profess to be Zionists themselves, their program, Ron Radosh and Sol Stern write, is anti-democratic, self-contradictory, and blind to the realities of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The claim of [Third Narrative leaders Todd] Gitlin and [Michael] Walzer that since they are not for a blanket boycott their version is more legitimate and ethical is fallacious. What if a far-right government in this country proposed a ban on those leftist political leaders in Israel whom Walzer and Gitlin like? What if a right-wing European government issued [personal] sanctions against Walzer and Gitlin and stopped them from speaking in Europe? Gitlin thinks the views of Bennett and the others are “a proper target” because “their activity is toxic.” He doesn’t seem to comprehend that these “toxic” leaders have gained support because ordinary voters in Israel are fed up with the Palestinian leadership’s long and continuing refusal to accept any kind of a just peace and two-state solution. Israeli politics have become “toxic” primarily because of the failure of Israel’s peace camp to succeed in ending Palestinian rejectionism, despite scores of compromises they have offered to the Palestinians.

Read more at PJ Media

More about: BDS, Leftism, Liberal Zionism, Naftali Bennett

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