A Recent Spat between Washington and Jerusalem Tells Much about the U.S.-Israel Relationship

At a recent press conference, Barack Obama trumpeted the support the Iran deal received from the Jewish state’s “military and security community.” Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s defense minister, responded by comparing the deal to the Munich agreement of 1938, provoking a kerfuffle that ended with conciliatory words from Benjamin Netanyahu and an apology from Lieberman. While the whole exchange was most likely aimed at domestic audiences, the episode, according to Emily Landau, is revealing:

This mini-crisis inadvertently shines a light on two important themes: first, how the [Iran] deal is in fact perceived in Israel and how statements of Israeli security figures have been misrepresented in the internal U.S. debate; and second, the nature of U.S.-Israel relations and their importance to Israel, especially compared with attempts to intervene to prevent a nuclear Iran. . . .

[T]he relevant credentials for making an authoritative evaluation of the nuclear deal [should be] expertise [in nuclear proliferation] and intricate knowledge of the deal—not necessarily the fact that one served in the Israeli military or security establishment. . . . And yet, the voices in support of the deal [of former generals and intelligence directors] were immediately incorporated into the internal U.S. debate, as if to say to American critics: how can you question the nuclear deal when these top security people in Israel say they are fine with it? . . .

What the Obama-Lieberman episode also underscores, however, is Israel’s order of priorities when weighing the relative importance of stopping Iran against the importance of U.S.-Israel strategic relations. Indeed, if there is one insight that seems to have been clarified over the past year, it is that the order of priorities for Israel places U.S.-Israel relations at the top. And this seems to be behind [Benjamin] Netanyahu’s notable lack of public advocacy against the deal since last autumn.

Read more at Tower

More about: Avigdor Lieberman, Barack Obama, Benjamin Netanyahu, Iran nuclear program, US-Israel relations

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