At long last, even if years too late, Israelis woke up this week to the realization that we face yet another existential threat. Yes, it took 100,000 “Men in Black” in downtown Jerusalem to make the point, but finally, we get it. As dangerous as are the delegitimization of Israel and the specter of a nuclear Iran, Israel is no less threatened by a growing population of religious fundamentalists who insist on the right to racial discrimination in their schools and who utterly reject the legitimacy and authority of the Supreme Court. They reject, in other words, the idea of a “Jewish and democratic” state.
There’s more, of course, including their treatment of Sephardim (even haredi Sephardim), the often despicable attitude to women in their communities, their tendency toward violence (when irked, they attack city workers, police officers and even the haredi rabbi who urged the Sephardi parents to go to the Supreme Court) and, most obvious, their unwillingness to share the burden of defending this country.
This cancer threatens to destroy everything we have built. Yes, that’s a harsh metaphor, but it’s apt. As Dan Ben-David of the Taub Center has shown, despite its current economic stability, the State of Israel is simply economically unsustainable if matters continue this way. Barring a dramatic shift in policy, the country will collapse under the weight of these haredi “cells” that drain the energy from the best of the body. There’s nothing inherently evil about a cancer cell; we dread it only because it kills the organism we desperately wish to preserve. Haredim have every right to live as they wish, but that does not mean that we must allow them to destroy the country that we have built at such great cost over the past century.
THE HAND-WRINGING of the past week suggests that most Israelis believe that there’s little we can do. I disagree. With apologies to Jonathan Swift, I offer the following modest proposal for our collective consideration.
Those who argue that the two-state solution will not work are right. We need not a two-state solution, but a five-state solution.
1. Hamastan will be created on the territory now known as the Gaza Strip, and will be ruled by the same people who already run it. Like Iran and North Korea, Hamastan will survive through sheer force and the use of terror, until its citizens rebel. Its borders are already internationally recognized. It already has a flag, and international sympathy in abundance.
Yes, it’s short on many other commodities, so one presumes that even as Israel continues to blockade it (for it will remain sworn on Israel’s destruction), it will have to continue to let in massive humanitarian aid, either by sea or by land. But perhaps Egypt will open its borders and let goods flow in from the south. After all, it’s not as if Hamastan will be sworn on Egypt’s destruction. In Hamastan, in short, nothing but the name changes.
2. Fatahland, on the other hand, will rise from what is today the West Bank, or Judea and Samaria. It, too, thankfully already has a flag. It could become a democracy, though probably a limping one at best, considering the Palestinians’ record of creating transparent, democratic institutions. True, we might be pleasantly surprised, and its democracy might flourish. Equally possible, though, is that absent Israel’s efforts at propping up the scaffolding of its democratically inclined leaders, Fatahland could slip into dictatorship. The jury is out, but whether Fatahland is democratic or just another version of the brutal regime of Hamastan would really not be Israel’s problem.
Fortunately, even if Fatahland begins as a despotic regime, however, that could eventually change. For as Americans like John Adams and his compatriots knew, as millions of former Soviet citizens learned and Zionists before May 1948 understood well, you can earn freedom when you want it badly enough and are willing to risk – and sometimes to die – for it. Perhaps Fatahlandians will really crave freedom enough to be willing to die for it. They’ve proven that there are those of them willing to die to kill us; now we’d see if they’re willing to die to make themselves free.
3. Palestine will be the country of today’s Israeli Arabs. Increasingly, Israeli Arabs are wholly unambiguous about the fact that they reject the notion of Israel as a Jewish state. Adalah is only one of the Israel-Arab advocacy groups that have openly called for ending the Jewish character of the State of Israel. And the citizens of Umm el-Fahm, Israeli Arab citizens who rioted after the recent flotilla incident, continuously make it clear that they want a different type of government. It’s time to give them one. Though its borders would have to be negotiated, Palestine would be based in the “Triangle” section of the Galilee where such sentiment is strongest. And we’d have to figure out how to handle the other pockets of such sentiment, which are not geographically contiguous with the Triangle.
Palestine would probably be democratic. It would simply be liberated from the oppressive Jewish regime that it can’t bear, and would be free to chart its own course. And amazingly, Israel might have a neighboring Arab state with which it’s never been at war.
Alas, Palestine does not have a flag. The PA’s flag will be taken by Fatahland. And Israel’s flag, based as it is on the image of a tallit, would be thoroughly unacceptable. Designing a flag will thus be one of the first challenges to which the leaders of the new state will have to turn their attention.
4. Haredia will be the ultra-Orthodox state. Based primarily in the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Mea She’arim, Geula and Sanhedria, along with Bnei Brak and perhaps a few other localities, Haredia would be the country that last week’s 100,000 plus protesters clearly desire. It would have a Supreme Council of Rabbinic Elders, not the vile secular Supreme Court that so offends them. They would be free to do whatever they wished with their schools, and with their Sephardim. They could impose a halachicly based system of law as other countries have done with Shari’a. They could virtually guarantee the exclusion of all the nefarious influences they so deeply object to in contemporary Israel. They could impose whatever standards for conversion they wished, without causing a rift with the rest of the Jewish world, which would actually have more in common with Turkey than it will with Haredia.
Today’s haredim already have a political party called Degel Hatorah, the flag of Torah. Surely, they’ll have some ideas for a flag.
How Haredia will defend itself against attacks from elements emanating from Hamastan and Fatahland is, admittedly, not entirely clear. Defense, after all, takes some serious commitment, a willingness to risk and lots of training. There is a real possibility, unfortunately, that Haredia will be utterly unable to defend itself, and Haredians (some will just call them Haredim, probably) will find themselves the most abandoned and vulnerable group in the Middle East. What will the world say about that? Will there be the same outpouring of concern that there is now for the Palestinians of Gaza? We’ll learn a lot about the world from watching how many other countries come to the verbal and physical defense of Haredia facing its Arab neighbors all alone.
5. Israel will be the region’s Jewish and democratic state. It doesn’t have recognized borders, but at least it does have a flag. It will be mostly Jewish, though some Israeli Arabs will decide to remain Israelis instead of becoming Palestinians, and they should be welcomed. The same with Haredim – a few might be willing to recognize the legitimacy of the Supreme Court and might decide to live in a Zionist entity. If they want to go to the army and are willing to live off their own salaries and not off government subsidies, then they, too, should be welcomed.
ISRAEL WILL be a broad tent. It will include religious and secular, right wing and left wing, free marketers and those more inclined to socialism. It will be home to Im Tirtzu, a right-of-center student organization seeking to restore Zionism to Israeli campuses that countenances no criticism of Israel whatsoever, and Breaking the Silence, former IDF soldiers – and other peaceniks who’ve now glommed on to them – who travel across the world telling anyone who’ll listen about the excesses of Israeli power. It will be home to Avigdor Lieberman and Naomi Chazan.
Eventually, of course, it’s likely that both Palestine and Haredia will discover that running a country is a pretty complicated business. You need hospitals, and police. You need a functioning court system. You need people who can run the power company and the phones, people who can fly airplanes and people who can represent you in the international community. And, they’ll discover, all that money that Reform and Conservative Jews helped steer toward Israel actually did make life much better.
So the time may come that they’ll crawl back to us, on their hands and knees, begging us to annex them back. Imagine that. Israel annexes territory, but because the territory actually asked to be annexed. What a breath of fresh air.
Wait, though – not so quick. Maybe we’ll take them, maybe we won’t. Because by then, hopefully, we’ll have had a serious national conversation about what our country is committed to. We won’t be embarrassed by the idea of a Jewish democratic state, and we’ll have discussed what preserving it will entail. So we’ll tell them who we are. They can join the enterprise called Zionism, or at least live with it and respect it, or they can stay independent.
But we ought not to be cavalier about this scenario – it is profoundly sad for Israel, too. Most Israelis take great pride in the country’s commitment to diversity, even if it is far from perfectly implemented. Its commitment to heterogeneity, and to freedom, is both one of its great strengths and one of its great weaknesses. Breaking up the region into these disparate countries addresses the weakness, but also robs Israel of potential strength. It’s an eventuality Israel should want to avoid.
What makes Israel different from these other imagined countries is that it does not wish to purge from its ranks those who are different. But it is slowly being given no choice. The challenge to its leaders now – were they only able to extricate themselves from their inability to make any decisions about anything at all – is to take sufficient steps to show these populations that in an ideal world, we want to live with them. But even more than that, we want to survive. Therefore, if surviving means living without them, so be it.
The real onus is on those groups who refuse to accept the notion of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state to show Israelis how we survive with them, and to demonstrate that their continued participation in our nation will not lead to its ultimate demise.
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Dr. Daniel Gordis is Senior Vice President of the Shalem Center, where he is also a senior fellow. The author of numerous books on Jewish thought and currents in Israel...
The Jewish State must end, say its enemies, from intellectuals like Tony Judt to hate-filled demagogues like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Even average Israelis are wondering if they wouldn't be better off somewhere else. 
“What makes Israel different from these other imagined countries is that it does not wish to purge from its ranks those who are different…. The challenge to its leaders now … is to take sufficient steps to show these populations that in an ideal world, we want to live with them.”
I am trying to figure out how this is not a back-handed endorsement of the one-state solution. Do really mean to invite Hamas and Fatah to “join the enterprise called Zionism, or at least live with it and respect it”? You seem to make no distinction between the haredim’s dreams of a Jewish theocracy, and the Palestinians’ desire for independence.
This piece should be read by every Jew in the Diaspora. Extremely important.
I respectfully disagree Dr. Gordis. If you break up Israel it will be like in the old times where the country was vanquished becaused they were not united and strong.
The Hamas will never accept a Jewish State, this is wishful thinking because of their hatred which is centuries deep. I still remember the daily pinches and insults”Jewess daughter of a dog” as a little girl walking to school in Cairo. One man even spat on my face.
I think that the Haredi should leave Israel and go to whichever country they want. We don’t need people who take and don’t give anything. Their laws are archaic, close to the charia. So are their rules with women working to provide the men with a living while taking care of a family. I called it slavery.
Thank you Dr. Gordon for all your writings and support for Israel.
Great Article! After living in Jerusalem for 3+ years over 20 years ago nothing has changed. I personally could have written this article then. I became less observant after returning to the US. The Haredi are a minority in Israel however they yield so much power controlling all life cycle events in every citizen’s life regardless if they are a secular, reform, modern and ultra orthodox Jew. Nothing has changed…I very much connected to your thoughts…well presented!
Sharon Finkelstein
Phoenix, Arizona
Hamastan and Fatahland — A place of KOACH
Palestine — A base SHEL LISHCOAHC
Haredia — A home of NOACH
Israel — A land of MOACH
If land is the base, and home is the place
MOACH for LISHCOACH, and NOACH for KOACH
But if land is the home, and base is the place
MOACH is for NOACH, and LISHCOACH is for KOACH
It is so complicated, not simple as I
Thank G-d I don’t have to do or die
Or maybe the time is now and forever
To look in the mirror and face it if ever
Another great article. The Haredi are a big reason my mother declined to stay in Israel in 1960 after being there a year studying towards a doctorate. There is a reason why the USA has a separation of church and state in the constitution.
sometimes more IS better. i like it. and lets make sure if we are going to continue to fund public schools in israel that there is at least some judiasm taught? or do we just want USA, Canada, or Australia in the Middle East?
Ah, Dr. Gordis, I only wish it were as simple as your article makes it seem. When Hamastan overruns Fatahland and forms an alliance (at gunpoint?) with Palestine, then attacks Haredia, will the Haredi sound their shofars and wait for G-d (or the UN) to save them? What does Israel do when the four states are launching points for attacks against the remnant of the Zionist state? Hope for yet another miracle in a war they are destined to lose while Obama seeks a diplomatic solution and Jordan again looks for a land-grab opportunity?
No, I think it might be better to keep the status quo in Hamastan and Fatahland, build a walled city and put the Haredim in it, and then work out an understanding with the remaining Arabs on how the two people can learn to live side by side in a confederated state.
Your write: Palestine would be based in the “Triangle” section of the Galilee.
The “Triangle” isn’t in the Galilee.
The flights of Swiftian fantasy of course only serve to highlight the protean heights of (near?) impossibility. Where else can we go to solve the multiplicity of tangled troubles but to the edges of imagination? Moses saw a New York City before it existed and we see the collosal fruits of his work. Where else do we go?
I prefer to call it Haredistan! It’s more in keeping with the spirit of the Taliban which the Haredim seem to want to emulate.
Nice. Totally agree about the haridim.
But doesn’t ‘united we stand, divided we fall’ remind us of anything?
Israel cannot be defended, at reasonable cost, with Fatah in the West Bank. Anyway, that’s what Muslims do throughout the world. Divide and conquer. Look at the Philippines, Thailand, Nigeria… Anywhere in the world, the language is the same as with Israel: Land for peace.
Once you give them land, they create another problem and on it goes until your land’s gone.
Look at India, Pakistan and Kashmir.
I can’t believe how blind some people can be.
It might not be so far fetched and we must realized all the arab ones
Want us dead.
When looking for a solution to a problem, it is important to define what the problem actually is.
If over 60 years of ongoing conflict has taught us anything, it would seem that it is that anti-semitism is the underlying reason for this conflict, and for this there may be no human solution. IMHO, I would like to offer an additional aspect that may indeed offer us a path for solution.
It seems to me that the leadership of the Jewish People in the State of Israel as well as abroad has not correctly defined the problem.
Staying alive is a very good raison d’etre, but having a reason for staying alive as a Jewish People is an even better reason. If the leadership, temporal as well as spiritual, would place the re-constitution of the Jewish People after thousands of years of dispersion somewhere near the top of their agenda, we might begin to see a real turnaround. HaShem helps those who help themselves. We have so many strengths, so many ways of re-inforcing the potantial synergism that exists between us – all we need, apart from HaShem’s help, is to want to be that People that only we the Jews can be.
Rashi explains in this week’s Parasha, “Balak”, on the verse in which Bil’aam praised the tents of Israel: “Ma tovu ohalecho Yisrael…” that he referred to the fact that the openings of the tents were not opposite one another, rather each was turned away from that of its neighbour, thereby ensuring the modesty of each family. That is the “up-side”. Another side of that coin is that we could unfortunately become immune to the needs of our neighbours, to say nothing of sharing in their troubles as well as their joys. The Jewish People have learned through the ages to find the right balance between these needs – on the one hand strengthening the Jewish home and its home-life and on the other remaining attuned to the trials and tribulations of his fellow Jew anywhere in the world as well as sharing in their joys and simchas.
“Am L’vadad yishkon” – a People that dwells apart. The Jewish People are an internal People – our strength is inwards. When we start dealing with that very real aspect of our nature, the healing will begin, and then we can deal with our place in the family of nations.
Shabbat Shalom!
At long last you directly confront the threat posed by the Israeli Haredim. They reject a Jewish and democratic state but nevertheless leech off those who pay taxes and serve in the Army, all in the name of restoring authentic Judaism to the Promised Land. In the US, Haredim work and own businesses. They have segregated schools, buses and live in their own neighborhoods and towns but privately finance and manage them on their own. Yes, some receive social services but not in excess of what other ethnic groups and individuals are entitled to.
As for the various Palestinian States, accepting reality, without getting into how this reality came about, is actually a pretty sensible approach. That’s why it’s not likely to find it’s way onto the floor of the Knesset or into the Cabinet. But you’ve got my vote.
Cutting loose the Haredim to go on their own is a great idea… that is if you’re really serious about it. That infers not getting weak-kneed and going to bale them out when their “other” neighbors proceed to gobble them up. Frankly, there are some really disturbing similarites between Hamas and Haredim. They’re both stiflingly oppressive entities.
It is so true. It would be even funny, if it weren’t so sad!
… to make the real matters to go at least one small step in the right direction, I wish that Israeli government would stop giving money away to Haredim . However, political coalitions are difficult to build without a lot of bribes, which makes any development in this area impossible.
My apologies for being cinical, but have you seen lately at least one politician, who would not do anything he could to get a coalition (=power=money etc.) ?
On the other hand, if some extremists right wing parties were banned before , it’s about time to repeat it again and decrease the political power of Haredim .
Welcome to the Three Weeks.
Enjoy a Shabbat Shalom U’Mevorach.
Moishe
The Aboriginal peoples of Australia, New Zealand ,South Africa Canada and the United States commonly live in the past,stay in reserves,pay no taxes,live off government largesse,are exempt from the duties and advantages of full citizenship. Sound familiar? Raise the haredi to full citizenship status and do the same for Conservative and Reform Judaism.
Maybe if God isn’t too busy the next year he could inspire more Haredim to join the IDF (there are some now, probably no more than 200) and others to join the non-IDF public service (probably there are 1000-2000 Haredim now serving in some capacity in that regard) and still others to get real jobs (I seem to recall God saying something like, ‘Six days you will you work’).
SOUNDS GOOD TO – BUT – KNOWING THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN —
WHAT IS THE SOLUTION — I REMEMBER ON ONE OF MY TRIPS A FRIEND (WHO I MET THROUGH NA’AMAT USA- SHE HAD WHO MIGRATED TO ISRAEL A FEW YEARS BRFORE THE “INCIDENT” – SHE WAS WALKING FROM HER HOME IN JERUSAEL TO THE KNG DAVID HOTEL WHERE WE WERE STAYING. WHEN SHE CAME SHE LOOKED SHAKEN — SHE TOLD ME TO GET TO THE HOTEL SHE HAD TO PASS MEIR SHARIM AND WAS STONED AS SHE PASSED. THEY SHOUTED THAT HER SLEEVES WERE NO LONG ENOUGH. MY FRIEND IS ORTHODOX AND WAS STUNNED.
WHEN WILL THE GOVERNMENT TAKE SERIOUS NOTE OF THE BEHAVIOR OF THOSE FANATICS?
SHABBAT SHALOM!!
As usual, Danny Gordis is right on the money.
When will there ever be leaders with the courage to tell it like it is? Certainly not here in the U.S.–we really have idiots in charge. And the system of government in Israel forces concessions to coalition partners that are bringing the country down.
I am so afraid for that little country that I love so much.
I realize the article is “tongue in cheek” but alas, the issues remain very true. I agree with Saul that the status quo regarding Hamas and Fatah is probably the wisest choice. I remember in the 1940′s when the Haredim and the Reform had one thing in common. Not recognizing Israel, and they still don’t. But the Haredim don’t mind living there in the that Secular State that is not the true Israel and taking advantage of what it offers-and the American Assimilated Reform, embarrassed by the possibility of a “double loyalty” are now J Street and free to criticise that State they never wanted in the first place. Oy!
So are you going to lead with the cancer analogy the next time you dialogue with Haredim?
And what about a 6th country for the settlers? If Gazan, West Bank-ian and Israeli Arabs all need their own countries then certainly settlers need their own country, too.
Mordechai Goldman is so right. Survival “for what?” is an urgent and even eternal question. As Jews, or Israelis, this is the axis from which we may find our way.
IMHO, Shlomo Ben Yehuda doesn’t fully understand Reformed Judaism. I am a Reformed Jew, and I am a liberal, I believe in human rights, I am also intelligent and rational, and I do not belong or believe in “J Street”, or any of the other anti-Israel groups. The Rabbi in my Reformed Temple taught the difference between tradition and law. If we wished to observe tradition, that was fine with our Rabbi. Breaking the law was not. Please Shlomo, don’t lump all Reformed Jews in the same bin.
It’s the haredi who refuses to understand the difference between 11th and 12th century tradition and Torah law. Also, if they were studying Torah and Talmud, how could they miss any of the passages extolling labor, industry and the honest craftsman? R. Joshua b. Levi, Thorns and thistles shall bring it forth to you. (Gen 3-18) In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread. (Gen 3-19) Plus many more passages.
Did not Rabbi Hillel declare, “What is hateful to you, do not unto your fellowman; this is the whole Law. The rest is but commentary.” (approx 30 BCE – 10 CE). The haredim seem to be experts in treating others in the manner of which they don’t wish to be treated. Maybe Reform, Orthodox and sectular Jews need to gather rocks to throw at the haredi when they act in a like manner.
I’m of the opinion, because so many of the Israeli citzens are from so many different countries and of so many different persuations, they all need to take a “loyality oath to Israel” before being granted citizenship, issued a passport, receiving public assistance, or even being allowed to stay in the country longer than a few weeks as tourists. There needs to be some controls, but I have no suggestions on how to implement them.
We have often thought about a similar solution but you put it in so articulate and eloquent a style.
It is all a luscious fantasy. Maybe we can work towards a patial solution that may be somewhat realistic..a separation of “church” and state. There should not be religious parties, but religious persons in secular parties…We must wrest away the authority in marriage and divorce from the relligious authority and allow the individual to decide . If we are a democracy we cannot have such religious constraints . Without the pressure of winning coalition partners among religious and hardei interests we could use funds more wisely and the efforts of special interests at blackmail would be less effective.
I have been in Israel since 1965 so I know more or less what goes on. My idea is that we are all 80% antisemitic as there are at least 80% of the people here that we dislike, but to call the Haredim a cancer is encitement of the worse kind. I’m sorry to see you fall into the trap set by the media. As far as I can gather of this last instance there are a good number of Edot Mizrach girls in the school and even some of their mothers went to prison. That makes the situation and the attitude of the police a little absurd!
Behold the three quotations below:
“This cancer (Haredim) threatens to destroy everything we have built.”
“Israel is a cancer and the Jews are like a disease like AIDS?”
“The Jews are like a disease, we lock them in concentration camps so that they can not infect the German population.”
The first quote is from your article “The Five State Solution.” The second one is from an ant-Israel forum on the web while the third is a quote of a Nazi official made during the Second World War.
As much as I admire your writing including a lot of the other good points you make even in this article, there is never room for this kind of rhetoric. It’s not a good sign when the comparisons you are making have already been used by people who are clearly racists and bigots.
Please be careful when comparing any people to “cancer.” What are we supposed to do? Should we kill them or just remove them from our midst?
You yourself wrote, “Yes, that’s a harsh metaphor, but it’s apt.” It’s not apt, it’s just completely inappropriate.
Looking forward to future articles.
Shavua Tov!
Howie
“their tendency toward violence (when irked, they attack city workers, police officers and even the haredi rabbi who urged the Sephardi parents to go to the Supreme Court)”
This is a deplorable example of generalizing. Their is a small minority of charedim who react violently – there were no reports of violence at the demonstration about Emanuel.
This is vile, Jew-hating bigotry. When a Jew demonizes other Jews as being a cancer on Israel, he is no different than an Amalekite who demonizes Jews as being a cancer on the Fatherland.
I’ve noticed a trend: The world-at-large often demonstrates a knee-jerk condemnation of Israel despite the facts (e.g. the flotilla). The Chiloni (secular) condemnation of the Chareidim parallels this exactly. It’s the same phenomenon. The bitter condemnation given to Chareidim, particularly WRT the Emmanuel case, is completely removed from reality.
Daniel has characterized Haredim in the same terms that the Nazis used against us and this serves no useful purpose, rather it increases sinat chinam. We need to find ways to help charedim become a more meaningful part of the enterprise of Israel-building, as is demonstrated in the suprisingly successful Nachal Charedi. But calling them cancerous is out of bounds and such words lead us to a bad place.
Unfortunately, the Haredim are beyond reasoning with. One cannot reach compromise with those who refuse to see more than one side.
Comparing what Daniel Gordis writes to Nazi anti-semitic writing is completely ridiculous.
I think that many people have missed the point. I understand, at least I’m pretty sure I understand, that this ‘solution’ is offered tongue-in-cheek. Dr. Gordis is not really advocating a five state solution of this sort, nor does he think it could ever happen — a state made up of a few neighborhoods in Jerusalem, and then some a few dozen miles away?
He is merely calling attention to the unfortunate state of affairs whereby it seems that separation – an untenable and impossible solution – is making itself seem all the more necessary. What was so captivating to me about this article – from the author of a book about how to win an unwinnable war – was that it seems to reflect my own despair, and I was hoping for a ray of light instead. I know that every generation looks back at ‘the good old days’ and sees their present as the end of days, but I’m really not sure were we’re all headed in this case. It seems like with Hamas, with the PA, with the Charedim…even with the Israeli Arabs, or Palestinian Israelis, as they call themselves — we have no one to talk to. Frankly — who are we, anyway? Do we have anyone to talk on our behalf Maybe the problem is that Israel is a country crying out for an ethos like that of the United States – a melting pot of immigrants who must join the narrative of freedom to be real Americans — when we are instead trying to hold onto an ethos of ‘one nation, one religion, one family’, and the exceptions to those, or the groups who wish to become exceptions, are becoming to numerous and too strong to ignore or absorb. Our narrative, of the Jewish people and Zionism, is accepted by a smaller and smaller proportion of our population every day.
Mr. Gordis,
While I certainly do not understand the Haradi way of life or the actions they take as a community, we are all of the Jewish nation. To spew the hatred that you feel only makes Am Israel weaker, just what our enemies pry on. To think of you as an educated man, I would have liked to have read some sort of solution to finding at least one comonality between “us and them”. After all, when the next war comes, the bombs won’t differentiate any Jew living in Eretz Israel.
What about the 6th country – “New Sudan”? Made of the tens of thousands of Africans who are allowed in unimpeded? They’re already a mojority in south Tel Aviv, and growing all the time.
This article typifies what has become common among many secular Israeli’s today: scape goating. Secular Israel today faces a severe identity crisis, therefore they lash out in jelousy at those that have the strongest identity: The Charedim. The use of such derogatory and vile terms to describe fellow Jews is simply a way of diverting any introspection towards the problems of secular Israel and blaming it on others.
I was unpleasantly surprised by your unmistakably hostile tone and attitude tTIf chawards the Charedim. After all, they endured the progroms the Arabs were incited to act out before there was a Jewish state. In 1948, when Arab bombs and armies laid siege to Jerusalem, it was they who died and the rest were forcefully chased out of the Jewish sector of the city. They lived there because of their profound love of the land and the Holy City and their desire to serve G’d. If their dress and way of life offends you – that is your prerogotive. But to characterize them as you did is almost sacrilegious. They live in unbelievable poverty and contributions to them has always come from orthodox and traditional Jews of other countries around the world, NOT from
Reform Jews. The Reform movement had its origin in Germany – it was a stepping stone towards assimilation, the emasculation of Judaism,and eventual conversion and acceptance by the host society. And you know what happened to the German Jews.