Tag Archives: Politics

The Real World

Posted on October 15, 2024 | 3 comments

(First published in the Jerusalem Report, October 21)

Rabbi Dr. Ron Kronish makes a compelling case (Jerusalem Report, October 7) that the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael must learn to live together. He touts our shared ancestry and shared values and attributes continued strife to “deeply ingrained negative stereotypes” that need to be “overcome today through education and dialogue.” If only it were true. My heart is with the writer, though not my head.

All Jews want peace, prosperity, and freedom for all peoples. In the real world in which we reside, Islam is dominated by a relative minority of radicals for whom the existence of Israel is repugnant and unacceptable. Indeed, that fraction of Muslims might number 10% of all Muslims, which computes to one hundred million people of the roughly billion Muslims across the globe. That is not a small number and they wage war not only against Israel but also against the West. They have perpetrated terrorists acts in dozens of cities across the world, and of course delight in murdering Jews wherever we might be found.

We can wish this were not so – Dr. Kronish completely elides this very recent history – but we would be saps to base our diplomacy and statecraft upon wishful thinking. Such wishful thinking underwrote the Oslo Accords and their “sacrifices for peace,” the creation of the Palestinian Authority, the expulsion of Jews from Gaza, the tolerance of the Hamas terror infrastructure, and directly led to the atrocities of October 7 and the multifront wars Israel is now waging. We indulge the saccharine rhetoric about the “moderates” and “coexistence” at our peril; it was the exact same language that lulled Israel into the catastrophic diplomacy of the last three decades.

Certainly, there are moderates in the Arab world. The Abraham Accords spearheaded by President Trump demonstrates that. Israeli visitors to the United Arab Emirates are treated quite hospitably. And yet, all the peace treaties have not changed hearts and minds in the Muslim world. Few Israelis now venture into Egypt or Jordan, and Jordanians and Egyptians have wantonly murdered Jews. Even in Dubai, Jewish public prayer has ended. Worse, after Hamas terrorists invaded Israel, hundreds of the “innocent civilians” of Gaza rampaged, raped, marauded, and murdered even Jews who had befriended them, hired them, transported them to Israeli hospitals. Peace and co-existence are unnecessary with the moderates and impossible with the radicals.

Of all the Arab states that have made peace with Israel – a welcome development per se– it is hard to think of even one that would mourn Israel’s disappearance. Consequently, even these nations that are ostensible peace partners with Israel routinely vote against Israel in the United Nations. Yes, a cold peace is better than a hot war – but there is something much deeper that unfortunately precludes full co-existence.

That impediment is an Islamic doctrine that dictates that any land that was once Muslim remains Muslim in perpetuity, and if lost, must be recaptured, the Dar al-Islām. That Jews have returned as sovereigns in the land of Israel is especially galling. We can wish that away as well but wishing it away does not make it less true. And if 10% of Muslims subscribe to that doctrine, then “education and dialogue” is asking them to repudiate their religion, a fools’ errand indeed.

Many Israelis still delude themselves into thinking that this conflict is all about real estate and finding the right division of territory to satisfy both sides. This is an egregious error born of a secular mindset that cannot admit there are people who take religion seriously. It was baked into Israeli diplomacy, which is one reason Israel’s strategic position has so deteriorated since Oslo. We would be prudent – as befitting a “wise and discerning people” (Devarim 4:6) – not to repeat the same mistakes but to look to our traditions and Torah for our claims to the land of Israel.

It is disconcerting that, in the entire article, Dr. Kronish uses the word “violent” only in relation to what he terms “extremist settler Judaism,” apparently willing to deny the settlers of the Jewish heartland the right to defend themselves and our land. Note the irony that the way Israelis on the left regard the settlers is the same way the world regards Israelis – violent, extreme, genocidal, and other lies. But the settlers are the ones who counter the Muslim narrative with a proudly Jewish one – that this is the land that G-d granted us, from which we were exiled, and to which the Jewish prophets declared we would (and did) return. That is the grand drama of Jewish history.

Must this war end one day, as Dr. Kronish declares? We can hope for that as well, as long as hope does not transmute into naiveté. But Hamas has already infiltrated Jerusalem and dominates the Arab educational, commercial, cultural, and political institutions there. Hamas is more powerful today in Judea and Samaria than is the Palestinian Authority, itself rampant with Jew hatred. Iran shows no signs of abating its Jew hatred and prepares to develop nuclear weaponry, winked at (if not subsidized) by the current American government. And I am unaware of the pedagogical tools that will persuade those who delight in burning children alive and stealing corpses for ransom, and those who support them, of the error of their ways. Sadly, the current battles will end but the war will go on, as it has since the first Jewish casualty of Arab violence in the land of Israel 140 years ago.

When will it end? Jewish tradition in many places (see, e.g., Zohar, Parshat Vaera, end of chapter 7) states that the final war at the end of days will be between the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael. Our long and bloody history with our brother Esav is essentially behind us and the climactic battle with Ishmael will be waged over the land of Israel.

This war – all wars – will end when redemption comes and all mankind recognizes the sovereignty of the Creator of the universe. Until then, we should befriend all moral people who believe in the Bible and respect the Jewish narrative. And we can hasten that day of peace not by renouncing our heritage in the futile quest of winning over moderates without power or influence anywhere, but by deepening our connection to Torah, mitzvot, and the land of Israel.

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Don’t Be Manipulated

Posted on July 29, 2024 | 1 comment

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

Are good and decent people so easily manipulated?

Even as President Joe Biden’s advancing senescence was so obvious to impartial observers that his aides and handlers kept him under wraps for years, allowing him only rare and heavily scripted encounters with the media and public, Americans were being reassured by those closest to him as well as the media types who masquerade as objective journalists that Biden was sharp as a tack and nimble as a gymnast. Almost all Democrat politicians and foreign diplomats played along even as they privately voiced concerns about his mental acuity.

This is no laughing matter. Global crises abound, America’s leadership is vital, and whoever has been running the country for the last 3 ½ years has made a mess of it – domestically and internationally. And the American people are still being played for fools. The same people who for years said that Biden is perfectly well abruptly decided that he is perfectly unwell and have now decided that Kamala Harris is a perfect successor. It is even within reason that whoever talked Biden into engaging in an unprecedented pre-convention debate with Donald Trump knew that Biden would crash and burn and, as such, easier to disgorge from the campaign.

To add to the contempt the administration must have for American citizens, Biden’s decision to drop out has been attributed to no specific cause except a desire to “pass the torch to a new generation.” But what changed from July 12, 2024, when Biden was committed to his candidacy, and July 14, 2024, when he announced his withdrawal from the race? The glaring problem, necessitating the lies and obfuscation, is that if Biden admits to a physical and mental condition that makes his candidacy untenable, it should be his remaining president for the next six months untenable as well.

It is worth noting that as Joe Biden began his presidential aspirations with a flagrant act of plagiarism, he ends it with another act of plagiarism. His 1987 campaign foundered when it was revealed that he, oddly, had filched then British Labor Party leader’s Neil Kinnock’s personal biography almost verbatim. Similarly, his campaign ends with Biden’s desire, repeated endlessly by every Democrat who received the memo, to “pass the torch to a new generation.” Anyone with even slight historical memory recalls that line from President John F. Kennedy’s eloquent inaugural speech, where he intoned “Let the word go forth from this time and place to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans…” Really?

Perhaps if Biden had cited Kennedy, he might have brought redemption to the world, in line with Masechet Megilah 15a. Another missed opportunity.

It is indeed strange that there is little outcry from Americans about being duped for so long, maybe because so many who were duped for so long were duped wittingly, with a vested interest in being duped for as long as possible.

Nevertheless, the Biden deceptions have not spared Israelis either.

In Biden’s withdrawal address, he stated that in the last six months of his presidency, he would like, among other things, to “end cancer as we know it” and “bring peace and security to the Middle East.” At least he is thinking big, if not a bit fancifully.

But he also stated that he is “going to call for Supreme Court reform because this is critical to our democracy.” Biden wants to reform the US Supreme Court, in some unspecified ways, because he disagrees with their rulings. Perhaps he would like to pack the Court with additional justices more to his liking. Perhaps he would like to change their method of selection, the extent of their jurisdiction, or place the current justices under greater Congressional scrutiny, notwithstanding that these three proposals would require a constitutional amendment that will never happen.

Are we, too, so easily manipulated? Isn’t this the same Joe Biden (or his mouthpieces) who lectured and hectored Israel last year that our proposed judicial reforms were a threat to democracy in Israel? Didn’t Biden declare his opposition to judicial reform in Israel – including the selection of judges and limiting their jurisdiction – and state “the need for the broadest possible consensus” or the reforms should not take place?

Didn’t Biden proclaim “that shared democratic values have always been and must remain a hallmark of the U.S.-Israel relationship,” implying – as tendentious leftist Israeli “journalists” opined – that judicial reform in Israel will imperil the US-Israel alliance, as the US will invariably conclude that Israel is no longer a democracy (if Supreme Court justices do not have unlimited jurisdiction on every issue in Israeli society and insist on choosing their successors as well)?

Didn’t Biden term “unfortunate” the Knesset passage of the repeal of the “reasonableness clause” that allowed Israel’s High Court to base its decisions on personal whims and predilections and not at all on laws or legislation passed by majority vote in Israel’s Parliament?

That minor modification, since annulled by Israel’s undemocratic Supreme Court, was nonetheless called by one Congressman, Jerry Nadler, a “dark day for Israeli democracy.” Has Nadler deplored Biden’s attempt at judicial reform in the US? Of course not, and don’t hold your breath that he ever will.

Didn’t Israelis, even some good and decent people who supported judicial reform, allow themselves to be bamboozled into thinking that our ties with America would fray forever if true reforms were passed, that the country would veer into chaos and dictatorship, so now was not the time for reform? We must not lose sight of the fact that the Supreme Court’s heavy-handedness (dictating IDF tactics and responses along the Gaza border) was also partly responsible for the calamity of October 7 – and that such will never be properly investigated because the Court also controls any commission of inquiry?

In essence, Biden has reserved a right for himself that he denies Israel’s public. He will champion judicial reform in the United States, even though as currently constituted the US Supreme Court is subject to democratic controls that Israel’s Supreme Court is not. And he will denounce Israel’s valid efforts at making Israel’s Court more democratic, more responsive to the people, and more subject to checks and balances like the other branches of government.

We should not expect Biden to remember what he said last year nor demand consistency of expression from any politician. But there should be limits even to hypocrisy (but, of course, there are none). We should, though, expose the palpable manipulations from last year, and this year, and not let up.

When Israel passed our minor reform (that was soon after nullified by the Supreme Court it attempted to constrain), Biden said: “The genius of American democracy and Israeli democracy is that they are both built on strong institutions, on checks and balances, on an independent judiciary.” Hmmm. What changed? Why does the genius of American democracy need reform now but not the genius of Israeli democracy, which actually needs it more?

One takeaway is that we should stop taking seriously every pronouncement from the United States government, which should have been denounced at the time for its gross interference in Israel’s domestic affairs. We might consider issuing a statement urging Biden to retain America’s “independent judiciary,” whose weakening will reflect poorly on our “shared democratic values.” Another takeaway is that we should pay even less attention to Israel’s leftist journalists, activists, protesters, and rioters, whose goal is not to protect the judiciary or democracy but – as it has been for almost a decade – to topple the Netanyahu government and then restructure Israel as a less Jewish state.

And we should scrutinize every pronouncement through one lens: who is trying to manipulate us, and why?

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The Missing Piece

Posted on March 18, 2024 | 1 comment

(First published today at Israelnationalnews.com)

The National Guard is patrolling New York City subways to keep the people safe and even that is not working. There are homeless encampments in every major city, cities which are already being overrun by the millions of illegal migrants that are crossing America’s porous borders. The United States is $34.5 trillion in debt. And Chuck Schumer thinks that Israel’s government needs to be changed.

Schumer’s obscene outburst – which he has since tried to partially retract – was revolting both in style and substance. Yes, who is he? This gross interference in Israel’s domestic affairs exposes the hypocrisy of the Democrats who whined (falsely) about Putin’s alleged interference in America’s elections; yet, they have no hesitation at all interfering in Israel internal affairs – again. Both Clinton (1999) and Obama (2015) sent staff and money to try to defeat Binyamin Netanyahu. Now Schumer is doing Biden’s bidding in this vile display of contempt and condescension towards Israel, our electorate, and our government.

Schumer has always fancied himself Israel’s shomer, a play on his name, but he has more consistently been, throughout his career, a schemer, a partisan Democrat hack. Schumer, who has the distinction of achieving the highest elected office of any American Jew now has the dishonor of being the highest elected American Jewish official ever to betray Israel. Let us not forget that it was Chuck Schumer who in 2015 pushed through Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran that will (barring some intervention) enable them to produce nuclear weapons and provided them up front with billions of dollars in cash that was and is being used to murder Jews. Having ensured there were enough votes not to override the dirty deal in the Senate, the oleaginous Schumer voted against it (to save face in the Jewish community, which bought it).

Besides calling for elections in Israel and the defeat and removal of Netanyahu, whom he deemed “an obstacle to peace,” Schumer emitted this gem: “The world has changed, radically, since [October 7], and the Israeli people are being stifled right now by a governing vision that is stuck in the past.” By this he meant that the path to “peace” lies through indulging the two-state delusion. Well…talk about being stuck in the past.

The “two-state delusion” is not October 6 thinking. It is November 1947 thinking. It is an archaic, discredited, wholly deranged idea that rewards terror and will only encourage the enemy to plot more, to attack more, and to bomb more because there is literally no downside to it. The Knesset made this quite clear just a few weeks ago. An unprecedented 99 MK’s voted against an imposed “Palestinian state,” and close to 80% of Israelis oppose it as well. It’s not Netanyahu or Smotrich or Ben Gvir – it’s us, it’s the people, it’s common sense, it’s elementary morality.

Sure, “the world has changed radically” since October 7. Evil is ascendant across the globe. Rather than fight and destroy it, Schumer, Biden, Blinken and many in the Democratic Party want to appease it in the finest tradition of Neville Chamberlain. But Israel is not South Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Taiwan, all abandoned by the US in one way or another. They can either aid Israel in this struggle or not. But if US military aid is only granted not with strings but with chains, Israel does have the capability and the obligation to protect our interests.

Israel cannot prevail with this type of US support, the kind that demands – as Antony Blinken unctuously intoned, words then read verbatim by his water-carrier Schumer – that Israel’s “priority number one” must be the protection of Gaza’s civilians. No, no, no. That is depraved, preposterous, and defeatist. The fate of Gazan civilians should not be in the top ten of Israel’s concerns – or as much as the fate of enemy civilians was America’s concern in Germany, Japan, or Vietnam. In truth, but for Israel’s excessive concern about enemy civilians, we would have fewer dead soldiers and the war would be over by now. The stated war objectives are destroying Hamas’ terror capability, liberating our hostages, and ensuring that Gaza is never again a center of terror. Gazan civilians – the ones whose homes all had tunnels and were used as weapons depots – are not our problem. Months ago, they should have been resettled elsewhere – perhaps in the US, which annually admits millions of people who have identical problematic pasts.

Despite Blinken’s blathering, our concern should prioritize our civilians – those who were murdered, those who were kidnapped, and those who remain homeless because of the predations of our enemies. Blinken never mentions displaced Jews – only displaced Gazans. His priorities are skewed and should never be ours. We must never intentionally target civilians – and we never do – but that is wholly different than prioritizing their safety at the cost of victory.

What are we missing? Why is Schumer, like a lapdog with a bone, suddenly obsessed with a Palestinian state? What do the Democrats – and the Israeli left – not understand? Why do even genuine supporters continue to speak of coexistence as if, with just a little more goodwill, it is right over the horizon?

There is a missing piece to this puzzle.

In a private conversation some thirty years ago as the Oslo debacle unfolded, I spoke with a former State Department official, a former ambassador, and someone gung-ho about the prospects for peace in the Middle East (always just a few more Israeli concessions away). I asked him one simple question: “what if this is all a ruse? What if the real objective of the Arab countries is to destroy Israel, and all the peace process does is incrementally weaken Israel until it is ripe for conquest?”

His answer was telling and frightening. He said: “We do not factor in that possibility at all. If we did, we could never have a peace process.” It emerges that the likeliest explanation for all the terror, the missiles, the invasions, the wars, the bombings, the stabbings, the ramming, and the incitement – that many Arabs reject Israel’s very existence and always will – is never a consideration in the halls of diplomacy. It is this missing piece, this willful blindness, that shapes international diplomacy and now has produced the wailing for the “two-state delusion.” Would it not endanger Israel’s existence? No, say the grand poohbahs of diplomacy, because they have categorically ruled out that Israel’s existence is in danger and that our enemies want us dead.

Think of how we could change the world as we know it if we just ignored inconvenient facts. Why, human beings could fly… if we ignore the effects of gravity. And perhaps with enough international goading, and the magical words uttered by the right people that produce the ostentatious signing ceremony, Israel can be convinced that it can really fly, far and high.

Two months ago, my wife sat on a plane next to an American Israeli woman from a leftist kibbutz in the south who was also returning to Israel. Asked if she supports the “two state delusion,” the woman demurred. Everyone else on her kibbutz did before the Hamas massacre, but she did not. Why not? She explained that she studied just a few years earlier for a graduate degree in London, and there befriended some classmates who were from Gaza. Talking about politics, she questioned them about the two-state delusion, and, as she described it, they laughed at her. “We don’t want two states. We will not rest until we destroy Israel. You have no right to live on any part of that land – our land. And we don’t care how long it takes.”

So many of Israel’s devoted defenders have publicly repudiated the accusation that Gaza was “occupied,” and that the “occupation” was the cause of the invasion, because, indeed, Israel (foolishly) abandoned Gaza in 2005. All true – but it misses the point.

To our enemies, Gaza is occupied, as are Ashkelon, Beer Sheva, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Yerushalayim, Tzfat, and Kiryat Shemonah. That is the sum and substance of the “river to the sea” chant. Why do we ignore what they are saying? Why do we act horrified when we point out “that means no Israel!” Duh – that is exactly what they mean. Why do we pretend otherwise? We do so because we are loathe to consider the implications, but that does make it any less true.

Freed from the illusion that peace will ever be possible with enemies who will never stop and never give up, our entire statecraft should change. Our strategies, our public presentation, and our narrative cannot be the same. We would not just be managing the conflict. Our settlement policies would be efficient and coherent, not protracted and reactions to terror. We would not worry about antagonizing our enemy because they cannot already be more antagonized.

We no longer have the luxury to fantasize that our enemies do not mean what they say. We must somehow get it through our skulls that too many Arabs – in Gaza, Judea, Samaria, Lebanon, Syria, and even among Israeli Arabs, not to mention the Iranians – want to smother us and strangle our reborn state. And there is not much we can do to change that. We can through strength, vigilance, and fierce determination convince them that in the short term, their dream is dead. They will not defeat us and we should prove that by re-claiming Gaza and dispossessing them. But we should not allow continued residence in the land of Israel to those who harbor these genocidal fantasies. No one should live here – from the river to the sea – who does not want to dwell in the Jewish state of Israel.

To be sure, the Abraham Accords demonstrated that there are Arabs and Muslims throughout the region who respect our existence and sovereignty. There have always been such voices in the Arab world, although many have been muted, silenced, and killed over the last century. Time will tell if this friendship is based on love of Mordechai (the Jew) or hatred of Haman (the Persian). But if we refuse to acknowledge this basic truth – that those who are our enemies will never be reconciled to our existence – that nothing will change, even if Hamas is destroyed in Gaza.

If we ignore this reality, painful as it is, we will wake up the day after to still more rockets, bombs, stabbings, and shootings. We will be lamenting how hard it is to be a Jew in Israel rather than lamenting how hard we make it on ourselves to be a Jew in Israel because we choose to ignore reality. Perhaps it will take new leaders untainted by conceptions, fantasies, and illusions, and willing to tell the truth to our citizenry, to recognize what has been obvious for most of the last century. There is a reason Arabs have rejected the two-state delusion consistently from 1937-2024. They do not want us here and they will never abandon that dream. The fact that we do not mind having some of them here – we welcome co-existence if they recognize our rights and our sovereignty – does not alter the reality that many of them do not want us here. And they prove that almost daily through acts of terror and violence, through the propaganda and incitement they feed their children in school and their worshippers in the mosques, and through their explicit statements.

But this is why Schumer can say what he says, and Biden and Blinken can carry on as they do, and Israel’s left can continue to foster the illusion that if only they were in power, we would be the darlings of the Middle East, eating hummus in Damascus because they would know how to make peace with our enemies who feel religiously compelled to destroy us. Like Frankenstein’s monster, the Oslo crowd is resuscitating itself before our eyes hoping we have short memories.

Perhaps it is time that our leaders spoke frankly to us, to the Americans, and to the world, about our intentions in the land of Israel. We are fools if we again relinquish Gaza having conquered it for the third time, fools if we indulge the diplomatic delusions of Americans and Europeans, fools if we worry about enemy civilians more than we do our own, and fools if we pay no attention to what our enemies say and mean.

Perhaps we would benefit if we, a “wise and understanding people” as the Torah describes us, started acting like it, with pride and confidence in our national mission.

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Haredim and the Living Torah

Posted on March 7, 2024 | 7 comments

(First published yesterday at Israelnationalnews.com)

The endless debate over Haredi conscription into the IDF contains several especially vexing aspects. Neither side’s arguments are entirely convincing or easily discounted, even though each side thinks its contentions are dispositive and should end the discussion. There is merit on both sides, which should not preclude a decision. Politicians across the board are not necessarily seeking a resolution to this matter as their benefit accrues from stoking the flames and appealing to their respective bases. They enjoy the issue as a political football and the Haredim as convenient bogeymen, even as Haredim enjoy their status as defenders of the faith. Perhaps most intractable is that the two sides generally talk past each other as each possesses world views that are not only irreconcilable but also lack a common language.

Indeed, there are three world views that are represented in the debate: those who value army service but not Torah study, those who only value Torah study and not army service, and those who value both as proper expressions of being a complete Jew in the Jewish state. The discussions often have a ping- pong quality to them, contentions bouncing off each other but never fully countered. Each side assumes the righteousness and rectitude of its positions. There are Israelis who constantly complain about “kefiyah datit,” religious coercion, oblivious to the fact that their counterparts might perceive mandatory army service as “kefiyah chilonit,” secular coercion. In a perfect world, in my view, every Jew would spend time as a soldier and every soldier would spend time learning in a yeshiva – the former to teach us how to fight, the latter to teach us what we are fighting for.

What the Haredim tend to minimize in their commitment to full time Torah study is not just that such has almost never existed in Jewish life, at any time. Nor is it just blatant disregard of the Gemara’s declaration (Yevamot 109b) that “he who says he has only Torah does not even have Torah.” Learning Torah that is then not practiced – mitzvot, acts of kindness, concern for the welfare of others – is a most constricted and usually corrupted form of Torah. It is not a living Torah. But it is more than that self-imposed limitation. While secular Israelis trumpet the imperative of “shivyon banetel,” equality of burden that each citizen should embrace, religious Zionists have taken to advocating for “shivyon bizechut,” the equality of merit. Rav Shlomo Aviner has often noted that at least four mitzvot are fulfilled via military service – protection of Jewish life, settlement of the land of Israel, sanctification of G-d’s name, and not standing idly by while your brother’s life is endangered.

Rather than perceive IDF service as a burden it is far more edifying to perceive it as meritorious, a religious obligation that the State of Israel (and, I suppose, our bloodthirsty enemies who seek our destruction) has enabled us to fulfill for the first time in millennia. But what are the major arguments on both sides – and how can we find a harmonious way forward?

The major argument of the pro-draft contingent is quite simple and drawn from the Torah. When the tribes of Reuven and Gad wished to remain in Transjordan, presumably eluding the battle for the conquest of Israel, Moshe rebuked them: “Shall your brothers go to war, and you shall sit here?” (Bamidbar 32:6). Chastened, the tribal leaders responded that of course they would join the battle. Notice, though, how they did not tell Moshe that they would be learning Torah full time and thus should be exempt! Moshe would not have warmed to that idea – as he himself went to battle, as did Avraham, as did King David, as have many great Roshei Yeshivah and Torah scholars today.

I have yet to hear a cogent response to Moshe’s challenge, perhaps because if Moshe himself raised it, there is no cogent response. How can an entire group of people sit back and watch others fight, sacrifice, die – and not be ashamed? This is self-centeredness wrapped in the mantle of Torah. And if they do not fight, for whatever reason, how could they not want at least to do national service – even to teach Torah in places where such is lacking? When I learned in yeshiva in Israel almost fifty years ago, many of us joined the “civilian guard.” We were given rifles, rudimentary training, and went on anti-terror patrols once a week from 11:00 PM to 6:00 AM. Why did we join, American students all? We were expected to show up for minyan and seder the next morning, and our contribution to Israel’s security was probably slightly more than negligible. So, why? Because how could we not! How can one live in a society and not give back, not contribute to the common weal, not inconvenience oneself for the greater good?

In this context, the Gemara (Menachot 99a-b) states that “sometimes the dereliction of Torah is its foundation,” citing Moshe’s shattering of the tablets of law that G-d entrusted to him. But Rashi notes that the person who ceases his Torah study to perform acts of kindness is fulfilling the Torah on a broader level, and even “receives reward as if he is sitting and bolstering the Torah.” Nothing we did can compare to army service but what we did enhanced our Torah learning and did not detract from it.

If this is so obvious, then why isn’t it so … obvious? It is because the Haredi claims have merit as well and should not be cavalierly dismissed. They should, however, be analyzed and contextualized.

Haredim originally argued that a cadre of Torah scholars was necessary to replenish the Torah world after the Holocaust, but that is no longer essentially true. Torah scholarship has flourished here and it is one of the unique blessings of the State of Israel. Today, the arguments run that Talmud Torah is the “equivalent” of all other mitzvot (Peah 1:1); that Torah study “protects and saves” from misfortune and danger (Sotah 21a); that even Gentiles exempt clergy from military service; that Haredim are not the only ones in Israel who shirk military service – plenty of secular youth seek and receive “psychological” exemptions on dubious grounds; and that the controversy is usually contrived for ignoble political purposes, including now. All these arguments are true.

Added to that is the intentional exclusion of a larger group of Israeli citizens from military or national service – Israeli Arabs. What seems self-understood should actually give us pause. After all, India, founded in 1947 (one year before Israel’s independence) is a majority Hindu country with a 20% Muslim minority population, whose primary adversary is Muslim Pakistan – and yet, Indian Muslims are drafted into the military and fight against their co-religionists if necessary. That we assume Israeli Arabs are not sufficiently loyal to fight in our military carries implications that should be addressed, seriously, and soon. But it is puzzling why the greatest detractors of the yeshivah student’s exemption from military service seem untroubled by the exemption of Israeli Arabs from any type of service. They too benefit enormously from living in Israel.

The Haredi claims are not implausible but they deserve a response for the honor of Torah. Certainly, Talmud Torah is the equivalent of all the mitzvot but we do not therefore exempt the Torah scholar for the performance of all other mitzvot. “Keneged kulam” can also mean that Torah study reflects on all other mitzvot; the more we learn, the better our performance is apt to be. To dismiss the practical contributions to security of an army and to attribute our protection to the Torah alone is to confuse the proximate cause with the ultimate cause. The Torah mandates – and Ramban codified this as one of the 613 commandments – that we fight, conquer, and settle the land of Israel. We do not passively wait for assistance from Above, just like we seek out physicians for our medical problems, and just like we do not wait for manna to fall from heaven to feed us but work to sustain ourselves and our families. The Torah protects but it will not protect the person who sits down in the middle of a highway to learn. We must do our share. This is normative – this is the living Torah. It is true that the Torah protects; but such a belief is also unfalsifiable, and thus demands that we live in the physical and political reality of life.

This idea is corroborated by the experience of King David and Yoav, his Chief of Staff. The Gemara (Sanhedrin 49a) states that “were it not for David [and his Torah study], Yoav could not have been successful in battle, and were it not for Yoav [and his military prowess], David would not have been able to learn Torah.” But this is discussing an older King David, not the King David who frequently went to battle and saw no contradiction between the scholar and the soldier, whose life was the exemplar of the full Torah personality and is the model for the Messiah. Ideally, the two objectives are complementary and not mutually exclusive, and can be contained in the same person.

What must be uprooted is the mutual condescension that adheres to this issue, each side thinking it is superior to the other (because of the greatness of Torah study on the one hand and the necessity of military service on the other hand), and each side thinking the other is inferior (either because of the devaluing of Torah or the perceived selfishness in not serving). Yet, with all the value of prayer and Torah study, who is on a higher level – the one who donates a kidney or the one who prays that a sick patient should receive a kidney, the one who gives money to the poor or the one who learns Torah in the merit of the poor? The living Torah is a practical, not a mystical, plan for life.

What remains particularly inexplicable is the reluctance in much of the Haredi world to recite the prayer for the IDF, a disinclination for which I have never received a satisfactory explanation. That lacks in many things – ingratitude, for one – but also in an inability to share in the struggles of others. Those who have started saying it during the war are treated as if some cosmic breakthrough has been achieved rather than just behaving in a way that is normal. It is not helpful when certain Roshei Yeshivah speak contemptuously of the IDF, as if an army is unnecessary, as if any kind of support is “glorifying” the soldiers. This is poor theology and poor midot.

What compounds the problem even more is the new normal that Israeli society has adopted in the last year – that those who protest raucously and even violently, blocking roads and highways, acquire some measure of social and legal immunity, as if strident demonstrations convey automatic legitimacy to the cause that is the subject of the protests. Well, at least that was true for anti-government demonstrations; I wonder if it will be true for Haredi demonstrations. I think not.

With the abundance of valid contentions on all sides, what is the bottom line? It is the unspoken and primary reason for the Haredi reluctance to serve: the notion that they do not feel fully part of this polity and that the average Haredi could not survive spiritually outside the bubble in which they live. That is a sad admission, a failure of education and parenting, and tantamount to proclaiming that the Torah cannot be applied in the modern world. That is both false and embarrassing. Sure, the number of religious Zionists who go off the derech in the IDF is not insignificant and there is the persistent sense going back to the beginning of the State that the left’s interest in Haredi enlistment is less for the necessity of conscription and more for the necessity of assimilation.

Nevertheless, there are plenty of genuine bnai Torah who learn Torah, observe the mitzvot, serve with distinction, and are positive role models for those with whom they serve. Too many have been killed in combat in the last five months, still carrying their sefarim with them. Their Torah was also precious and their loss to our nation is grievous. The idea that we cannot remain pious Jews unless we live in an insulated community that guards us against interactions even with other Jews is preposterous and an indictment of the Torah. And even that fear can be assuaged by the establishment of separate Haredi units, such as already exist with Netzach Yehudah.

Weighing all considerations, on balance Haredim should serve because it is right that they serve! Sevara hu, lama li kra? It is so rational that a verse is unnecessary. How could they not? “Shall your brothers go to war, and you shall sit here?” Failure to serve is the repudiation of a living Torah. We are no longer evading the Czar’s draft. Obviously, coercion will not succeed – no one benefits from having reluctant, disinclined, and unenthusiastic warriors. Jailing offenders also will not work; one can learn Torah in prison as well. What must happen is that the Haredi rabbinic leadership, whoever they are and regardless of their stature vis-à-vis their predecessors, must speak of the State of Israel, the people of Israel and the army of Israel as values, worthy of being embraced by all. IDF service should not have to be concealed from their public and is not an indication of second-rate spiritual status. On the contrary, it is a sign of a first-rate spiritual and Torah sensibility.

We cannot expect goodwill from all sides; too many have a vested interest in prolonging this dispute. But there is a problem if Yoav Galant can declare that the Torah protected us “in the exile,” as if the Torah doesn’t protect us here. There is a problem if Haredim and others, for sundry reasons, have been unable to convey the immense value of Torah to the general society – of Torah study, mitzvot, the prophetic vision of our return to Israel, the providential nature of the modern State of Israel, and the redemptive process underway before our eyes. If we roughly categorize our society by three groups – “secular,” “religious nationalist,” and “Haredi,” each group has its virtues and challenges, each group has what to contribute to society, and each group has what it can learn from the others. And each group has shared obligations to preserve and nourish the spiritual and national destiny of the Jewish people.

As Haredim multiply in number, kain yirbu, it is natural and proper that their national lives will take on a greater focus and their societal contributions increase commensurately. We are not in the position to hire Hessians or even the Wagner Group to defend us. We must all share the merit of building and sustaining our national home. That is the objective of the living Torah.

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