Posted on 02/24/2007 6:41:52 AM PST by US admirer
In a normal country, discussion of the issue would have immediately climbed to the top of the agenda. Here it is difficult to compete with the huge headlines generated by the Zeiler Committee and with the nerve-racking drama that ended with the security forces successfully preventing a terror attack in Tel Aviv. Thus two important decisions made by the Israeli government this week were pushed aside: The extension of the Tal Law and the establishment of a civilian national service authority...
The simple and cruel truth must be told. The yeshivas serve as "cities of refuge" for those who don't want to endanger their bodies and souls. Their students don't want funeral processions leaving from the homes of their parents and they don't want their parents to lose sleep. In May 2006, then president of the High Court of Justice, Aharon Barak, ruled that the law to postpone military service undermines equality and human dignity and causes discrimination and deprivation...
...Does anyone seriously believe that it is possible to penetrate the Haredi community to check how many hours a young Haredi man is devoting to national service? (See for example the sentence of Shas' Ofer Hugi).
(Excerpt) Read more at haaretz.com ...
Gee, just like college students during 'Nam!
Bizarre. God was always telling the Israelis to go out there and kick some butt.
in addition to be being power hungry, intolerant and violent, the zealots are also cowards and government leeches. Israel's too good for them.
In post after post at FreeRepublic you have been using these stories to attack religious Jews and promote every vile form or anti-Semitism. Naturally this has nothing to do with what they do or don't do for Israel and everything to do with you own very deep and intractable prejudices. In evidence, just look at the following which you posted on another thread, something that easily could have been written by Julius Streicher:
"Hey come to think of it those long beards may have a purpose for these creeps: TRICHOPHILIA
Maybe they get off on the long scraggly beards/sidelocks.
Wonder how they would feel if someone invoked that theory to ban their facial hair."
God alone knows what you'd have said if you'd actually had something against them: if they'd been inciting mobs to murder Christians or joyfully collaborating as millions of Christian children were taken to their deaths by the Nazis. And it chills me to the bone what a man who promotes the notion that child abuse is part and parcel of the Jewish religion might actually do if he actually got the chance.
It also takes a special type of pusillanimity to post this thread at a time when you know most Jews won't be around to answer your despicable insults and charges.
This problem has existed, I believe, since the Israelis formed their government in 1948, if not immediately after they first successfully defended their new state.
It does seem quite a paradox that those who most righteously claim Israel's right to exist, claim the right TO NOT DIE IN DEFENSE OF THAT BELIEF.
Maybe those of us who are not Israeli are missing some of the finer points of this issue.
There are those religious types here in America that hold the same beliefs you know. I have no problem with them or these Jews. A devout and true Religious belief in peace is nothing to scoff at. This is a far cry from pathetic lefty morons who refuse to serve.
You are a disgusting swine. Here is what you wrote as a personal attack on me and my family.
Re: Hail to the draft dodgers (ultraorthodox cowardice in Israel)
From Basel2005 | 02/24/2007 10:46:45 AM EST new
Given the apple rarely falls far from the tree, God alone knows the kind of truly vile people who must have raised you.
You should give thanks daily that Jews have contributed so very much to a nation like the United States.
I will leave it to all to decide who is the scumbag POS.
When Israel has a pathetic left wing Prime Minister whose children are draft dodgers, it is not surprising the left wing media wants to incite against the religious community.
"You are a disgusting swine. Here is what you wrote as a personal attack on me and my family."
After the Nazis had enacted the Nuremberg Laws, around the world Jews organised a boycott of Germany. In response, the Nazis claimed that Jews had "declared war" on Germany for no reason whatsoever. In your attack on me, you are obviously taking a leaf out of the Nazi playbook. In post after post at FreeRepublic you have attacked religious Jews for all kinds of things, inter alia: being engaged wholesale in pedophilia, being cowards, dressing in a revolting manner, being perverts. You then, Nazi-like, suggest that is me who is at fault? Huh? Huh?
The reality is that you are a profound anti-Semite. It is also a reality that people are not born anti-Semitic and anti-Semitism is usually imbibed in the mother's milk or at least learned at the mother's knee. I therefore stand by my charge: "God alone knows the truly awful people who must have raised you." I shudder to think at what you must have been taught as Jews innocently went about their ordinary lives.
Recognising the vileness of the source, I wear your insult of "disgusting swine" with pride. It is very appropriate though that that was also a favourite Nazi insult often directed at Jews even as they were being herded into gas chambers.
I think you're somewhat mistaken. The Haredim (Ultra-Orthodox Jews) who dodge the draft and don't serve in the army overwhelmingly come from non-Zionist or anti-Zionist sects. These sects believe that Israel is not a "true" Jewish state because it is not run under Jewish law and/or that it was actually sinful to create a Jewish state without the Messiah. Because they attach no special signifiance to Israel, or disdain it, they dodge the draft and cause all sorts of other nuisances. These sects also reject the most of the modern world, including secular education and technology.
The Israeli right-wing (i.e. those who "righteously claim Israel's right to exist" as you put it) largely consists of Zionist Orthodox Jews, almost all of whom serve in the army -- and, statistically speaking, volunteer in very high percentages for combat units.
The Zionist Orthodox Jews are just as Orthodox in abiding by Jewish law, but follow Rabbinic opinions that justify Israel's existence as a secular Jewish state and believe that, if anything, modern Israel is paving the way for the Messiah. These Jews also very much live in the modern world -- they go to university, get advanced degrees, use the internet, etc.
It is true, but there is more too it also. Some of the best units in the army are Haridi units. It is the draft dogers fault, not the Haridi they hide behind.
Good answer.
See 12 and 13, and bear in mind Ha'aertz is a far left publication which is hostile toward observant Jews.
Thanks, I knew about Ha'aretz which is why I questioned it, and thanks for the response. Those posts were exactly the type of explanation I was seeking.
Thanks for helping to enlighten us.
I knew my perception was based on generalizations of "orthodoxy" in Judaism; as I said in my earlier post, that maybe someone (like you obviously) could enlighten us on the finer points of the issue. Thanks again.
And, it was somewhat of news to me that there was very many orthodox Jewish people, living in Israel, who thought the modern state of Israel should not have been created. I knew of some such groups in the New York metropolitan region, but did not know that any great numbers of them immigrated to Israel.
So, let me ask you. Why do you think that is; what do you find in their own opinions (orthodox who do not agree with the founding of modern Israel, but live there) as to how it is that they should live in the security of a state they do not believe should exist. Do they think (a)God will protect them, living there, with or without the government of Israel, or (b)that their fate, without Israel, is not important, it's completely up to God and they shouldn't concern themselves with it, or ???????
The prospects have me curious.
The difference between Haredim in the US and in Israel is largely one of numbers -- Haredim in the US are a tiny percentage of the total US population, mayble 0.1%. So, although they vote (usually Republican, btw), they have almost no influence in government and a limited ability to seclude themselves from the modern world.
Haredim in Israel are now maybe 10-15% of the population, thanks to extremely high birthrates. This gives them political power and -- since they have almost no other interests other than supporting their lifestyle and communal institutions -- allows them to sell their votes in Knesset (where, represented by political parties, they have seats) on other issues. It's a terribly bad analogy but, imagine if the Congressional Black Caucus announced that all it cared about was support for inner city schools & increased welfare payments to single mothers -- and would willingly trade all its votes on other issues (the war, farm subsidies, free trade etc.) for support of these issues. It would probably wind up very successfull in promoting those issues, and ally as much with Republicans as Democrats. So, basically, Haredim turn their numbers into political power, and turn political power into welfare funnelled into their institutions which supports their growing numbers.
As to issues of security, Haredim take different approaches. Some genuinely believe that they are a spiritual army protecting the inhabitants of Israel by learning Torah and praying, in the same way some Christians believe that prayer helps sick people recover. Others believe its all in God's hands anyway. And very, very small numbers of Haredim (no more than a few hundred deranged individuals) collaborate or support Arabs hoping to destroy Israel.
"Some genuinely believe that they are a spiritual army protecting the inhabitants of Israel by learning Torah"
I am not taking an opinion on the comment, but it is pregnant with meaning to allot of my current reading, which includes the religious history of the current modern era, which includes the very beginning of the current era, which includes the "pre-Christian" (and possibly early Christian) and other messianic Judaic sects in Judea, Samaria and the Galilee in the "first century", who believed they were the righteous ones in their day and who believed they were doing the same thing in their day, that you speak of some of the orthodox doing today - "a spiritual army protecting the inhabitants of Israel".
Cannot escape comparisons. Thanks for the ecumenical study in faith practices today.
Basel2005, jerks like this are the price of posting here.
US admirer, odd verb tense, do you post from a foreign country?
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