8FEOFTEBZ %FDFNCFS
HAARETZ |
8FEOFTEBZ %FDFNCFS
5
Opinion & Comment HAARETZ
8FEOFTEBZ %FDFNCFS ] 5FWFU 7PM Hebrew Edition Editor: Aluf Benn Deputy Editor: Avi Zilberberg
Avirama Golan
Would you move to the other sidewalk!
English Edition Editor: Charlotte HallĂŠ Deputy Editor: Simon Spungin
Fear of Haredim
Deputy Publisher: Guy Rolnik
Managing Director, Haaretz Group: Rami Guez
I
Managing Director, English Edition: Aviva Bronstein
Haaretz Daily Newspaper Ltd. 21 Schocken St.,Tel Aviv 61350 Israel. Tel: 03-5121212 Fax: 03-6810012 Customer Service Tel: 03-5121750 Fax: 03-5121703 E-mail: iht@haaretz.co.il. Advertising: 03-5121774, 03-5121112 Letters to the editor: letters@haaretz.co.il or fax: 03-5121156
Dispelling the darkness
:‍הור×?ות ×œ×˘×™×“×›×•×&#x; הת×?ריך‏ ‍ ה׊טחי×?‏3-‍ עדכו×&#x; הת×?ריך ב‏.1 The violent incidents in Beit Shemesh this )F1( ‍ בחירת כלי ח׼ ׊חור‏.2 week, beginning with little Na’ama Margolese, who was spat on and cursed on her way File > Export :‍ בחירה ×ž×”×Ş×¤×¨×™×˜â€Ź.3 home from school, and followed by an attack on television crews that had come to cover the news, should set off major alarm bells. .)‍הזה‏ ‍ (×–×” בדרך כלל × ×ž×Ś×? במ׌ב‏PDF ‍ בחירה ב×?ופ׌יה‏.4 The public at large has sensed the danger and yesterday evening they came to Beit Shem.)iht.pdf( ‍ ×”×—×œ×¤×Ş הקוב׼ בקוד×?‏.5 esh in large numbers to demonstrate against Eran Wolkowski | eranwol@haaretz.co.il
this extremist violence and against the ominous threat that it represents. The demonstration is welcome and is evidence of civic involvement and concern and the need to protect society from those who come to destroy it. Even so, it should be remembered that Beit Shemesh is an extreme case, that the hard core among the rioters represents a problematic exception and that most of the ultraOrthodox population decries this extremism and has itself suffered greatly from it. The Israeli experience teaches that sweeping hatred of the ultra-Orthodox is the easy way out for every populist, whether in politics or in the media. This hatred could have ruinous consequences. In the best case, it could only strengthen ultra-Orthodox isolationism. In the worse case, it could intensify the violence. The rioters in Beit Shemesh are criminals in every sense of the word. They cannot hide behind their religious worldview, behind their rabbis’ rulings on matters of halakha, Jewish religious law. Nor can they hide behind the argument ‍(�‏which in and of itself is correct‍ )�‏that government authorities have preferred to ignore the growing lawlessness in this increasingly ultra-Orthodox city and have allowed a reactionary group to terrorize the city’s residents and turn them into defenseless hostages. As a result, it is the government’s task, in the words of the Hanukkah song, to dispel the darkness and make it clear to the extremists that Israel is a country of law, and that the overwhelming majority of Israelis do not want to live in a backward country governed by halakha. Instead they prefer to live as lawabiding citizens in a free, open and enlightened society. The government must develop a firm and unambiguous policy that will enable the police, the state prosecution and the courts to apply the law to deal with the rioters as well as their spiritual leaders, who encourage and incite them to run wild. These people are endangering the well-being of the public in whose midst they are living and are threatening to undermine democracy and Israeli society as a whole.
Zvi Bar’el
The reconciliation threat
O
ne can imagine how Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ knees must have knocked when he heard that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would no longer conduct negotiations with him if Hamas joins the Palestinian government. No doubt, he thought that everything will now collapse with a loud boom. Demarcation of the border will be put in the deep freeze; the trucks evacuating Israel Defense Forces bases from the territories will slam on the brakes; farewell ceremonies for IDF commanders will be canceled; settlers who have packed their bags will go back home; and the Palestinian National Orchestra will fold up the sheet music of “Hatikva,� which it had planned to play in honor of the signing of the peace agreement. The Middle Eastern kaleidoscope is changing shape, shaking up reality at a crazy pace. But Israel is stuck in the book of Ecclesiastes: What was is what will be. Once again, Hamas is running Palestinian policy, and Abbas will get it in the neck. The Palestinian state was on the verge of obtaining recognition from the United Nations, but that was blocked by the Hamas regime in Gaza. After all, how is it possible to recognize half a state? The Oslo Accords and every subsequent agreement stressed that Gaza and the West Bank are two parts of the same entity, and as long as one part is run by a terrorist organization that doesn’t recognize Israel, it’s impossible to recognize a Palestinian state. But now, thanks to Syria’s murderousness, along with help from Egypt and support from Jordan, Hamas is reexamining the map of the region’s political topography and changing
course: no more armed struggle against Israel, but a popular struggle, meaning demonstrations and civil disobedience, as well as a willingness to drop its previous preconditions for joining the Palestine Liberation Organization, an understanding that it must recognize the agreements the PLO has signed and a return to the ballot box as the accepted method of achieving political victory. Hamas cannot be more righteous than the Muslim Brotherhood, and if the Brotherhood in Egypt is participating in the political game − and winning it − then so can Hamas. Six years have passed since the last election in the territories, in which Hamas won a sweeping victory. That election derived its authority from the Oslo Accords, which the PLO signed with Israel, and the U.S. administration was the driving force behind it. But since then, the administration has repeatedly rued its democratic aspirations, and together with Israel, it boycotted the electoral results. Even Hamas’ willingness to cooperate with Israel, albeit only on the administrative level, was pushed away with a 10-foot pole. “Hamas or Abbas� became the diplomatic slogan − and an excellent excuse for Israel to abandon any serious diplomatic process. The illusion that has been peddled ever since is that it is possible to sign a separate peace with the Palestinian Authority while continuing to bomb Gaza − to allow the Palestinians to open department stores and discotheques in Ramallah while strangling 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza. The split between Fatah and Hamas was seen as irreversible, something that could be relied on to perpetuate the diplomatic freeze. Fatahland and
Hamastan were etched into the Israeli consciousness as two states for two peoples, the people of the West Bank and the people of Gaza, rather than as a struggle between rival political leaderships. The possibility that the Palestinians would view this split as an anomaly never even entered Israelis’ heads. But things change. Hamas and Fatah are reconciling − not because of Israel’s beaux yeux [how it will look], but because it is in the Palestinians’ interest, and new regional circumstances laid the groundwork for this to come about. Israel can either ignore this development, wage allout war against the reconciliation or try to correct the diplomatic error it made half a dozen years ago. There’s no need to hold your breath. Israel has already announced its choice. But there’s no law ‍(â€?‏yet‍)â€?‏ against playing “what if,â€? so it’s permissible to think about what would have happened had Israel instead announced that it welcomes Hamas leader Khaled Meshal’s statements, hopes Hamas will turn into a legitimate political party and agrees to negotiate with any elected Palestinian government that is willing to negotiate with it. Such a government, established on the basis of a Palestinian consensus, would in any case be acceptable to most countries in the world, making Israel’s refusal to recognize it irrelevant. It’s also permissible to wonder: Will Israel refuse contacts with an Egyptian government established by the Muslim Brotherhood? Will it abrogate the peace treaty with Jordan should the Hashemite king grant sanctuary to Hamas’ leadership? And if not, why should it boycott the Palestinian Authority?
Bradley Burston
If you could see Israel naked
I
f you could see Israel naked, it might well look like this year. For the length of this corrosive 2011, you could feel something numbing, something comforting, being stripped away from us. The protective coloration − the start-up sheen, the silvery comb-over pretense of democracy and peace-seeking, of Jewish values and of membership in the community of modern nations − all of it has begun to wear thin and wear out. Good riddance. We’re better off. We need to begin to again see Israel as it truly is. Naked and vulnerable. Real. Ailing. Still worth saving. If you could see Israel naked, you would see behind the payot and the prayerful posturing and disproportionate power of extremists who, in their actions and rabbinic decrees, poison the name of Judaism and Jewish values. And if you could see Israel naked, you would also see past the despair and the depression and the paralysis of the majority. You would see that there is a rising current of light to this darkness, a mounting if gradual popular resistance. By Israelis who still believe in the prophetic vision of their own Declaration of Independence. By Israelis tired of being tacitly enslaved to the newest in the long, long line of Jewish history’s false messiahs. If we are to see Israel stripped naked, the place to begin may be with those most voracious in demands for what they have redefined − and weaponized − as “modesty.� Imagine losing the extravagant hats and the sumptuous frock coats of the rock-throwing, spit-spewing, child-abusing, crude-cursing misogynists of the voo-
doo yeshiva in Beit Shemesh. Underneath the clothes, they are no different from any other group of testosterone-poisoned bullies, weak and mean of spirit, wary of exposure, hiding unspeakable urges behind terrible acts. So it is, as well, with the thousand local incarnations of Hilltop Youth, the part-hippie, part-redneck gun-nut vanguard of permanent-occupation blackmail in the West Bank. Look past the exaggerated skullcaps and the exaggerated earlocks. Look instead at the funhouse-mirror ideology and the ritual Sabbath attacks on Palestinians and their property. Concentrate, for a moment, on the rock-throwing against IDF officers.
Exodus. Which is, worldwide, most Jews. In fact, the extremists who blacken our lives have little use for most Israelis, Jews or Arabs, and certainly none for the huge majority who supported the social justice movement this year. They look for support elsewhere, often abroad, often to actual non-Jews, with whom they have made bizarre common cause. But because this was a year in which the country was often stripped naked, we also saw, over and over, acts of quiet heroism. The Shalit family in their struggle to free captured IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. The Margolese family of Beit Shemesh in their struggle to protect 8-year-old
If you could see Israel naked, you would see behind the payot and the prayerful posturing and disproportionate power of extremists who ... poison the name of Judaism and Jewish values. Focus on their contempt for courts, the government, the Knesset, and you begin to see a pattern: Stripped to their essentials, these people are, in the most profound sense, non-Jews. Not merely because of their vehemence in whoring after false gods of “modesty� and settlement. More to the point, these are people who hate Jews. They have no use for them. They have no use for Jews who are liberal in outlook, temperate in behavior, believers in a Judaism that leans more to the universalist vision of the prophets than to the Amalek-must-die Dahiya Doctrine of
Na’ama, the daughter of North American immigrants who became a poster child for the national debate over the exclusion of women. Tanya Rosenblit in her effort to be recognized as a human with rights on a public bus. The rape survivors whose testimony sent a former president of Israel to prison. The list is long, and also includes heroism far from the public eye, as in the case of the NISPED organization, a Negev Arab-Jewish coexistence and development association, whose Be’er Sheva office for volunteers was torched this
month. What these people are telling us is that we do not have to settle for a Jewish state that does to the world what the yeshiva punks of Beit Shemesh do to women and girls: spitting at those who are, or should be, our neighbors and allies, cursing those who are part of us. If we could truly see Israel naked, we would need to make a decision. A decision about what a Jewish state should become, what Judaism is. What they will be, in this generation and those to follow. Maybe we already have. Perhaps it is Judaism itself that this corrosive year has flayed naked. Telling us that the Judaism that was created by, for and in a relentlessly hostile Diaspora, needs to adapt to a world in which that reality no longer exists. Yes, we were a people hunted; stateless; defenseless; powerless; subject to humiliation and pogrom, exclusion and expulsion and massacre. But the survival mechanisms which sustained us also produced horrible beliefs about non-Jews and credos of superiority regarding Jews − a secret arsenal of bigotry and contempt. Now bared for all to experience. If we could see the Jewish world naked, we might well see a new Judaism emerging this new year, a community of faith which fosters compassion and coexistence rather than the bullying, non-Jewish shandas of Beit Shemesh and mosqueburnings and no compromise and Avigdor Lieberman. A new Judaism. Stripped of xenophobia and 19th-century clothes for 21st-century issues. In the long run, it could save the Jewish people from extinction. If we’re lucky, it could save Israel as well.
t is difficult not to notice the signs of panic in Israeli society and the media. Everyone uses empty terms like “exclusion of womenâ€? and “women singing,â€? while expressing a deep ‍(â€?‏and understandable‍ )â€?‏anxiety lest the current lawlessness permit the most extreme groups to define Israel’s character as a reactionary, isolating and ill-intentioned place. But as always happens in unstable societies, this anxiety has found an expedient target rather than the real one. The real one is political: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s clear choice of an extreme-right, religious-Haredi coalition, and his determination to continue the devil’s deal between Likud, which purports to represent liberal-right values, and the Haredi parties, which represent reactionary values ‍(â€?‏and in most cases have long since ceased representing their voters’ needs‍)â€?‏, is one reason for the current unrest. Other expressions of this lawlessness include the “price tagâ€? campaign of the settlers, the shoving-aside of women in the army and the takeover by Haredi religiousZionist rabbis of the religious-Zionist agenda, from gender separation in schools to the insanity of overly stringent religious observance, to the point that zealous rabbis can interfere in marital relations to the extent of jeopardizing women’s lives. Those who strengthen the hand of the Haredi religious-Zionist rabbis, giving them senior positions in the education system, and who are lenient with mosque-burning criminals, reap the whirlwind. The whirlwind’s main victims are the silent majority of the religious population, but it sweeps all of Israeli society along with it. But anxiety, as we said, seeks a convenient target − hatred of the ultra-Orthodox. How easy it is to hate “the Haredim,â€? especially when they are facing the lovable symbolic figure of a young, innocent girl with fair hair and big large eyes. What the media did to her and her story borders on repulsive voyeurism. And not for the first time: The same thing happened with “the Sephardi girlsâ€? in Betar. The secular
public, which does not lift a finger in the face of blatant discrimination against women when it comes to wages, work and image; sharing the burden of childcare; the cruel emotional and physical abuse of young girls in the sex trade, is deeply shocked when a young girl in Beit Shemesh is spat at. How convenient, how romantic, how well it suits the politics of empty images. How useful for Netanyahu, who knows best how to use these empty symbols and turn this conflict, too, into a tool to glorify his image as the caring and liberal father of the nation. He makes declarations, while the public demonstrates on behalf of the girl and is shocked by women being pushed into the back of the bus. And female politicians on the right and the left woke up and formed a new forum for women, “against exclusion.� Bravo! Not that the fight against “exclusion� is not a worthy cause, far from it. But it brings two wellknown, linked dangers: that of the spiritually uplifting feeling of “it’s not political� or “goes beyond politics,� and that of once again using the Haredim as an instrument for venting frustration. The hundreds of thousands of Israelis who took to the streets in protest last summer turned their anger on personnel agencies and cheese wholesalers rather than the government that allows the injustices to happen. Netanyahu handed out a tranquilizer named Manuel Trajtenberg, that faded after it was swallowed. The public if fully aware that Beit Shemesh is not “the Haredim,� and that the reason “the Haredim� don’t work or serve in the army, and their children go to separate schools, is entirely political, and that it harms the Haredim themselves. But it is easier to hate a faceless collective so long as one does not risk a political statement that ascribes the weakening of Israeli democracy to a comprehensive process of domestic and foreign policy. The outcome could be ruinous. Anyone who doesn’t understand why should recall the fate of the Shinui party, which in effect won 16 Knesset seats for Shas before disappearing.
Salman Masalha
Proselytes are hard for Ishmael
T
he people who gathered among the “pictures of medal-bedecked Russian heroesâ€? at the community center in Lod were waiting for MK Anastassia Michaeli ‍(â€?‏Yisrael Beiteinu‍)â€?‏, who has presented a bill to silence the muezzins. One of those present termed the muezzin’s call a “tool of terror,â€? and said that muezzins use the words itbakh alYahud [“kill the Jewsâ€?] ‍(â€?‏as reported by Roy Arad in the Hebrew edition of Haaretz on December 20‍)â€?‏. We will return below to the source of the call to “kill the Jews.â€? Zionism, as its early leaders attested, was not interested in all Jews everywhere. It sought to create a new Jew here, and therefore sought Jews of a different type. David Ben-Gurion expressed this attitude very clearly: “Zionism is not a philanthropic venture,â€? he said in the 1930s to the Brit-
Associating part of the muezzin’s call with Arabs is a Zionist invention intended to demonize all Arabs. ish high commissioner, and added: “We need here a superior type of Jew who will develop the Jewish homeland.â€? When there is a dearth of “superior typesâ€? of authentic Jews, they bring converts to Judaism. As the Hebrew newspaper Hashkafa reported in 1903, “in a region of Astrakhan are many proselytes...they also leave the Russian language and call themselves exiles in Egypt and they call Russia Assyria and long for the coming of the redeemer who will restore the Jews.â€? ‍(â€?‏The quote is from Prof. Yuval Dror’s “Russian Converts in the Galilee at the Beginning of the 20th Century,â€? Cathedra, 1979.‍ )â€?‏The Zionist Movement pounced on this find, because it wanted to increase the number of “Jewsâ€? in Palestine and also to bring people to this country who were skilled farmers. Meir Dizengoff and Dr. Hillel
Yaffe, who were members of the early Zionist group Hovevei Zion, helped bring these “convertsâ€? to the country, and they were sent to Hadera and colonies in the Galilee. Ben-Gurion himself got to know the converts, Russian farmers who were Subbotniks ‍(â€?‏Judaizing Christians‍)â€?‏, during his time in Sejera. Despite tensions between the Jews and the converts, the Russian farmers proved a great help to Jewish settlement. There was another reason to bring them to the country. It involved improving Jewish blood. “It will not at all hurt Jewish blood, which has become weakened through generations of marriage ‍(â€?‏among Jews‍ )â€?‏to mix somewhat with Christian blood,â€? Yaffe said ‍(â€?‏also quoted in Cathedra‍)â€?‏. Many of those that “we neededâ€? for the “development of the Jewish homelandâ€? and the betterment of Jewish blood came to Israel with the fall of the Soviet Union. Many of them vote for Michaeli’s party, Yisrael Beiteinu. That party took the name “Israelâ€? and appropriated it as a “homeâ€? for itself; that is, if party followers claim “Russia is Assyria.â€? But they might also claim they are “exiles in Egyptâ€? and may even pray to the one “who brought us out of Egyptâ€? or “who wrought miracles for our forefathers.â€? One of the converts, one Yaakov Nitchev, lived in Sejera. He allegedly took to drink after a family tragedy. It is also said that one day a year, on Simhat Torah, he permitted himself to get “as drunk as a goy.â€? When he was drunk, he would revert to being a Russian farmer of the old days, and as with every drunken Russian farmer, the vodka would shout from his throat, bei zhidov â€Ťâ€œ(â€?‏kill the Jewsâ€?‍)â€?‏. That, it seems, is how the call was born here, at the beginning of the 20th century, in Palestinian Hebrew − itbakh al-Yahud. The Russian bei zhidov, which comes from the Russian pogroms, underwent a transformation here due to circumstances. It was translated literally-nationalistically by converts and lovers of Zion and was attached to the Arabs. Associating the call with Arabs is a Zionist invention intended to demonize all Arabs. Therefore, let the ancient sages be comforted: As it turns out, proselytes are not hard on Israel, they are actually hard for Ishmael.