According to Western mainstream media, the emergence of “extremist” elements in Israeli society is undermining the Jewish state’s democratic character, and thus justifies the increasingly common comparisons between Israel and oppressive dictatorships. It is true that various actions on the part of ultra-religious (haredi) or ultra-nationalist (“settlers”) Israelis are deplorable—including the pinning of Yellow Stars on children to invoke 1930s Nazi Germany, and vandalism perpetrated by youth against IDF installations (a so-called “price tag” act). However, an objective analysis of the situation has been sorely lacking.
For one, who are these alleged “radicals,” and are they truly representative of Israeli society and its evolution? Furthermore, are the actions of these individuals indeed plunging Israel into social and political chaos, the ramifications of which, we are told, purportedly pose an existential threat? Or are there other, perhaps subversive, elements at play?
Yes, Israel faces challenges, not unlike all democracies. Yet the real issues, often drowned out by a sea of hysteria, as well as the gravity of the predicament can be fairly deduced only by answering these largely overlooked questions. Today’s Briefing attempts to show this.
NO, ISRAEL ISN’T TURNING INTO IRAN
P. David Hornik
FrontPage, December 20, 2011
The big drama…in Israel…has involved Tanya Rosenblit, a 28-year-old writer and translator. Boarding a bus from the coastal town of Ashdod to Jerusalem, she stood her ground for about half an hour when ultra-Orthodox (haredi) Jewish men tried to pressure her to take a seat at the back. Rosenblit became an instant heroine, appearing on TV with the transportation minister and publishing an op-ed about her experience in one of Israel’s largest dailies.
In January 2011 Israel’s Supreme Court declared forced gender segregation on buses illegal. Politicians from both right and left condemned the attempt to coerce Rosenblit. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said “a fringe group must not be allowed to dismantle what we share in common.” Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger, himself ultra-Orthodox, said, “We don’t have the authority to force our ideas on others. This country does not belong to the haredi community.”
Gender segregation on Israeli buses has, of course, gotten attention from lofty places lately. Speaking to the Saban Center [last] month, [US] Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it and other Israeli phenomena reminded her of Iran. And in an already-notorious op-ed Thomas Friedman included segregated bus lines for the ultra-Orthodox community (to repeat, now outlawed) in a volley of jibes against Israel.
As the above story reveals, yes, there is a problem—and yes, it’s being addressed. It should also be seen in the right dimensions: only a small proportion of the public buses serve neighborhoods (mostly in Jerusalem) of the ultra-Orthodox, who account for 9 percent of the Jewish population. But, for some, catching a rumor somewhere (sex-segregated buses in Israel!) is enough to heap some more vilification on the much-criticized Jewish state.
And how did the problem come about? Does it really signal a deterioration of democracy, as Clinton complained? Or does it in fact reflect something quite different?
The ultra-Orthodox have always been a problematic community in Israel, ranging from hostile to ambivalent toward the secular state. But back in 1948 when Israel was established, they were a tiny community. Young haredi men were exempted from military service and even given state support for yeshiva studies. The secular-Jewish majority tended to see the haredim as an eccentric remnant of the Diaspora that, in any case, would soon wither on the vine.
It didn’t turn out that way; instead the community—very literally applying the biblical “Be fruitful and multiply”—burgeoned. And the last few years have finally seen some moderation, with small but increasing numbers of haredi young men enlisting for army service and others abjuring lifelong yeshiva study for the workforce. At the same time, another part of the community, anxious about these trends, has turned more extreme—hence such phenomena as sex-segregated buses and attempts to force that practice on others.
This capsule history, though, reveals that the flourishing of the ultra-Orthodox community resulted from Israel’s democratic virtues of pluralism and tolerance. A community that the majority resented for its hostility or coolness toward the state and refusal to take part in defending it, and whose way of life many considered a distortion of the Jewish religion, was nonetheless allowed to go its own way and even supported from the public coffers.…
Something similar pertains to Israel’s Muslim community. When Switzerland banned the building of minarets in 2009, when France banned Islamic face veils earlier this year…Secretary Clinton, columnist Friedman, and their legions of fellow Israel-critics did not publicly lambaste these countries for gutting their democracy. Minarets and Islamic face veils are, of course, all over the place in Israel, and no one would dream of trying to prohibit them.… It should be pointed out, too, that at a time of rampant persecution of Christians in the Middle East, causing mass emigration and vanishing populations, Israel is the region’s only country where (mostly Arab) Christians enjoy full rights and have seen a dramatic increase in population—from 34,000 in 1948 to over 150,000 today.
So next time you hear that Israel is rapidly reverting to the Dark Ages, don’t believe it. A radically heterogeneous country in a harsh part of the world, Israel faces more than its share of challenges. Friends of Israel don’t rush to condemn it; often context and nuance can reveal a very different picture from the latest media clichés.…
CHANGE THE SYSTEM BUT STOP HAREDI-BASHING!
Isi Leibler
Jerusalem Post, January 4, 2012
Last month, at the outset of the upheaval over enforced haredi gender separation, I wrote a column titled “Confront Unbridled Religious Zealotry Now.” [See “On Topics” below for the complete article—Ed.] Regrettably, the fundamental issues requiring attention have been totally submerged by a flood of histrionics and outright haredi-bashing that will only intensify divisions within the nation.
Many Israelis regard haredi lifestyles and the halachic interpretations of their rabbis as excessively stringent and incomprehensible.… [Accordingly], when haredim seek to impose their standards on the nation, we are entitled to become angry. This is what should concern us, rather than the criminal behavior against women by individual thugs—whom the bulk of the haredi community and their rabbis have unequivocally condemned.
Yet the media frenzy suggests that the principal threat confronting us is violence from hordes of violent zealots seeking to impose Taliban standards of conduct on the nation. This has fanned waves of hysteria, demonizing haredim who are held collectively responsible for the crimes of a small number of degenerate zealots.
Despite the Natorei Karta extremists who shamefully undermined the haredi cause by demonstrating in the streets wearing yellow stars and comparing themselves to Holocaust victims, the failure to deal with these fanatics rests principally with our own law enforcement officials. Over the years, they frequently avoided addressing these issues and stood aside.… The same applies to the price tag outlaws. Instead of directing collective blame toward law-abiding settlers who are outraged by such actions, the media should be condemning law enforcement officials for failing to apprehend and jail these criminals.…
The critical areas affecting the general population are conversion and marriage, for which a haredi-controlled Interior Ministry and Chief Rabbinate have created nightmarish obstacles to deter sincere converts. The rabbinate also indirectly encourages increasing numbers of non-observant Israelis to wed abroad, either because of the stringency of their pre-nuptial requirements or because growing numbers of secular Israelis simply want nothing to do with the institution.…
The other crucial issue, which has been overlooked in the current hysteria, is the ever-increasing proportion of Israeli schoolchildren attending state-financed haredi schools. By excluding all secular subjects from their curricula, these institutions guarantee that increasing numbers of Israelis will not be prepared for gainful employment and will thus remain dependent on state welfare all their lives.…
In addition, the issue of military service continues to generate rage among secular and national-religious Israelis. Over 90 percent of haredim remain exempted from any form of national service. There are absolutely no grounds for Orthodox Jews living in a Jewish state surrounded by enemies to be exempt from serving their country. Haredim should be obliged to fulfill their civic obligations by serving in the army or other forms of national service.
It is these issues, rather than the obsession with degenerate zealots, that represent the crucial challenges of the demographically expanding haredi population and that we are obliged to resolve now. Most Israelis would eagerly welcome electoral reform that would deny one-dimensional groups from exerting excessive political leverage to extort governments to capitulate to their ever-increasing demands.…
‘PRICE TAG’ ACTS WERE BORN OF THE GAZA DISENGAGEMENT
Moshe Arens
Haaretz, December 27, 2011
There is a French saying: Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner—to understand all is to forgive all. That should certainly not apply to those youngsters behind the “price tag” campaign, who are destroying Arab property, vandalizing mosques, and attacking IDF bases and officers. These acts are unforgivable, and this criminal behavior must be punished. And, nevertheless, it is important to understand what lies behind this criminal behavior. That may, in the final analysis, be no less important than punishing it.
Their actions do harm to the victims of their violence, but they also do damage to the State of Israel—its relationship to its Arab citizens, its relationship with the Palestinian population living in Judea and Samaria, and its reputation in the world. That is obviously the aim of their criminal activity. It is a “price” that they want the State of Israel to pay.
They may be foolish enough to believe that they can force the state to submit to their demands and cease the dismantling of illegal outposts in Judea and Samaria, but that is not likely. It is more like likely that they feel alienated from the State of Israel and its people, and that their criminal acts are an expression of animosity and even hate toward the state, its institutions and its army.
We do not have to search very far to discover the cause of these ugly sentiments. It is the disengagement, the forcible uprooting of over 10,000 Israelis from their homes in Gush Katif, the northern tip of the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria, carried out by the IDF over six years ago.…
Calls for a national referendum on the disengagement were disregarded. When the issue was brought to the High Court of Justice it was approved even though the court in its decision recognized that it involved a clear violation of the civil rights of the Israeli citizens to be uprooted.… In an unprecedented move, [Ariel] Sharon’s government booted out the IDF’s chief of staff, considered not sufficiently enthusiastic about the planned disengagement, and another chief of staff was appointed in his place and charged with using the IDF to apply force against Israeli citizens.…
The Sharon government’s use of brutal force—political, administrative and physical—displayed a total disregard for the views of a large minority of Israel’s citizens. As far as Sharon and his followers were concerned, “the end justified the means.” The means were patently undemocratic. The disengagement left a bleeding wound to this day in the hearts and minds not only of those uprooted from their homes, many of them still homeless, but also of hundreds of thousands who opposed the action. On the fringes, among immature youngsters, it produced the lamentable “price tag” phenomenon. It is a lesson that in a democratic society “bulldozer” tactics should not be used to override the views of a large minority of the population.…
So what is left of that impetuous decision by Sharon to uproot the settlers he implanted in the soil of the Land of Israel? Hamas ruling Gaza, a derelict [Kadima] political party and a group of juvenile criminals. The law of unintended consequences is at work.
NEW THEME: ISRAEL IS COLLAPSING; LOSING ITS DEMOCRACY.
EVIDENCE? NONE
Barry Rubin
Pajamas Media, December 28, 2011
It is truly amazing how anti-Israel forces generate so many false stories every day. At a time when revolutionary Islamists are taking over most Middle Eastern countries and the democracy dream in the region is collapsing, one would think that the main threat and evil force in the region is Israel.… What is even more remarkable is how new anti-Israel themes are generated without any evidence whatsoever.
The new one is the idea that Israel, and its democracy, are in danger (moderate version) due to internal extremism or are (radical version) falling apart altogether. At least two new commercially published books make this claim, as do scores of articles and even a speech by the [US] secretary of state. The New York Times publishes an op-ed saying that gays are persecuted in Israel while, of course, they aren’t but they are reviled and murdered in every other country in the region.
Yet what actual evidence can be accumulated for all of this campaign? The Knesset had a bill to supervise foreign money received by non-government organizations, a law not so dissimilar from those in Western democracies. And? And? What else happened? Well, nothing at all.
Oh yes, a bus driver took it upon himself to tell a woman to sit in the back of a bus because her sitting elsewhere might disturb Haredi men. She took it to court and, of course, won. A man who is a member of a tiny extremist cult in a small town spit at an Orthodox eight-year-old girl; apparently, he belongs to some extreme sect or is somewhat disturbed. Even the strictest reading of Jewish law does not justify such an action. There were huge demonstrations against the actions of this one person or tiny sect. President Shimon Peres publicly called for protests and Jerusalem’s police chief asked rabbis to condemn such behavior. The state and the public is clearly against any violation of democratic norms.
Oh, and incidentally this group in Bet Shemesh has something in common with those trying to blow this up into a big issue—they are anti-Zionist. Haredi extremists who are against accepting Israeli norms on the rights of women are also against accepting Israel altogether. So how are they examples of Israeli values and democracy? They aren’t.
In contrast, in Egypt political parties openly advocating the minimization of women’s rights received three-quarters of the Muslim vote. Polls show vast majorities favor death for converts from Islam, amputation punishments, etc. Yet the doings of individuals—condemned by the overwhelming majority of the community—supposedly prove that Israel is illegitimate or non-democratic. It would be fascinating if Western countries were to be judged by such standards. Serial murderers? Child pornography? Mass killings in schools? Aha! They are terrible, illegitimate, and undemocratic. Wipe them off the map!…
A large portion of Western television stories and articles on Israel is designed to give the worst possible impression of the county as dictatorial at home and evil in its foreign policy. We used to think the coverage was slanted but we never dreamed it would reach such levels.
The list is endless. Every day hundreds of stories are invented, distorted, or magnified.… Yet this same army of scribblers and talkers can’t seem to discover the radicalism of the Muslim Brotherhood or the intransigence of the Palestinian Authority.… The near-monopoly in the mass media and in academia for a narrow range of opinion (in the “age of diversity”!), [and] the dominance of ideology over professional ethics…have created a bizarre atmosphere of conformity or else.…
How does one deal with this mess? The answer is to build and strengthen an alternative…media, and alternative ways of educating people. It is to demand evidence to prove claims that are made and logic in setting forward arguments. In short, what’s needed is to restore academic and journalistic ethics; Enlightenment values; and logic from those who have abandoned these things.
We are not dealing mainly with Israeli sins—though these exist in proportion to those of other countries (and a lot less so than in most)—but with anti-Israeli propaganda disguised as news, analysis, and scholarship. This is not a series of regrettable errors but rather a war consciously aimed against Israel.…
