"Hatch a plot—it shall be foiled; for God is with us!"
Description
You do not want to be driving to or from Jerusalem today, or anywhere near the entrance to the city. With the government apparently pushing forward a bill that would continue the Haredi exemption from the draft (a bill the coalition needs to pass in order not to lose its Haredi factions, which would bring down the government and trigger elections), public furor surrounding the issue is brewing again.
The Haredim have decided on a massive show of force (in numbers) as a way of reminding the powers that be that they should not be trifled with. The impact on traffic everywhere hear the capital is the subject of newspaper articles across Israel’s press today.
I may be naive, but I find it very hard to believe that even religious non-Haredi Israelis, who lost sons and fathers and brothers at horrifying rates in this war, will swallow the pill that Netanyahu apparently thinks he can sweeten. Many people speak of a new coalition of former rivals, encompassing “those who served.” Ie, “let’s first get us all together and resolve this Haredi non-service abomination, and then we can deal with the differences between us.”
There was a period not that long ago when that was considered likely. One hears less about it now. Then again, elections haven’t been called, so it remains to be seen how this will play out politically.
In the meantime, the idea of a huge anti-military-service rally is so startling (to some) or obscene (to others) that the issue is all over social media. The press itself can’t really convey the depth to which this is roiling Israel.
For that, we need peeks into social media to get a sense of the national mood.
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Guy Moran, a very popular and talented political cartoonist, posted this drawing on his Instagram page. It shows the multitudes of Haredim making their way to the protest, walking by a street pole that is adorned (and most of them still are across Israel) with the stickers have have the faces of those who fell.
Their signs, which they’re holding as they walk by the stickers, say “We’d rather die than serve.”
The bitter irony isn’t exactly subtle.
Neither is the irony of this actual video of the Jerusalem train station this morning, with all the Haredim coming to the city while the soldiers are heading down to the trains to head to their bases.
I first missed this when I saw the video, but a friend pointed out to me that one of the soldiers in the foreground is a son of Rabbi Avi Goldberg, a revered teacher at a Jerusalem school and father of eight who was killed in the war. His son is now serving as the Haredim ascend to the street to hold signs that say (as in the drawing above) “We’d rather die than serve.”
Some people are dying. Just not them.
I’m hardly the only one who wonders if this public stunt isn’t going to backfire on the Haredim and on the government that is trying to shield them from the obligation to share in the burden of defending this country. Assaf Sagiv, one of Israel’s leading conservative public intellectuals, whom we’ve quoted often before, posted this earlier today (Google translated here):
