Given your obvious hatred of Jews, Judaism, Israel, all things Jewish, as well as the right of Jews to self-determination in their ancestral homeland — the same right granted to Europeans, Asians, etc. in their homelands — why are you on this site when you could be enjoying confirmation bias on so many AltL and AltR antisemitic sites?
Brilliant Nathan! I love how you use the comedic device of repetition to drive home your excellent satyrical point. Usually in comedy it's three, but your tenth cut-and-paste further down in the comments worked beautifully to underscore the nail-on-the-head truth of Hoffman's essay.
Fun slogan. I'll bet you can recite it out loud while using your brain to do simple math. Well done!
And a son of the B'nei Korach stood up amongst the multitude and with a voice of mighty righteousness roared all should rise up against those who slay the slayers of Israel as she sleep in her tents.
Edward, saw your profile on Substack. It explains your internal conflict.
The central tenet of Christianity is the Trinity, the worship of three gods. Worshiping anything more than one god is polytheism.
The central tenet of Judaism is the worship of one, indivisible god. This is monotheism.
A Christian rejecting Trinitarian belief does not automatically become Jewish. On the other hand, anyone who worships the Trinity can not be a Jew, regardless whatever rituals he practices or prayers he recites. He is a Christian. For Jews any other doctrine violates the fundamental tenet upon which all of Judaism rests, that God is One and Indivisible
There are certain problems with core Christian doctrine, something the Church would call theological errors. Consider the following:
In the Synoptic Gospels, God Himself nowhere appears. The only hint of God putting in an appearance is a voice out the sky (Mat. 3:17, Mark 1:11, and Luke 3:22 and even here the stories differ in detail); a voice out of a cloud (Mat. 17:5, Mark 9:7, and Luke 9:35); and John 12:28, but in a different context. On each of these three occasions no one around Jesus reacted to such a momentous event as hearing the (purported) Voice of God, making the accounts a revelation confined to Jesus alone rather than one shared by the public.
Two other very serious problems arise in Torah:
God stopped Abraham from slaying Isaac because he abhorred child sacrifice.
Lev. 18:21: God prohibits child sacrifice to Moloch. Does this mean he would allow child sacrifice to any other god? To himself contrary to Gen. 22:11-12 where he commanded Abraham to cease and desist?
Then in Lev. 18:23 God expressly forbade men and women to lie with beasts declaring it an abomination (תֶּבֶל). Man is closer to animals than God is to humans. Would God violate his own commandments? Would God lie with a creature that is lower to Him than beasts are to humans?
Side Note: In many, many pagan religions, a deity, usually male, mates with a human, usually a female, to produce a semi-divine creature called a demigod. In essence, then, Jesus would be just such a figure — a demigod. Sometimes the demigod dies: sometimes after his work on earth is done, he is raised to heaven. Sound familiar?
God labelled worship of multiple gods, child sacrifice, and sex with inferior creatures abominations Lev. 18:26 and absolutely forbade their practice. Lev 18:26 Not to mention that God strictly forbade the worship of any other god than Himself (see 10 Commandments).
Thus, worshipping three gods, one being a demigod, clearly violates the first of God's holy commandment to His followers.
Also interesting to note is that Jesus was born to Jewish parents, was circumcised according to Jewish law, was bar Mitzvahed, prayed at the Holy Temple, and not only never renounced Torah but told his followers that Torah was in full force and effect until he returned. The world is still waiting some 2,000 years later with no sign of return in sight. The one who ditched it was Paul, who set himself above his "master."
Several considerations arise from Jesus' Jewishness, a religion he practiced and never repudiated nor renounced.
Firstly, is that one cannot go wrong worshipping the God he worshipped.
Secondly, why would I, a Jew, want to get down on my knees and worship a Jew when I am already one?
Thirdly, it might be dicey coming before God in the Afterlife and telling Him you worshipped more than one god. Generally speaking not an advisable thing to do when dealing with the Supreme Deity.
Speaking as a physician, your rants convey the feel of mental illness. While I am unable to provide a definitive diagnosis on this basis, I would counsel you to seek help.
As an American, it pains me to read this. Here we have what I call JINOS, such as Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer. I seriously had no idea that such leftist extremists lived in Israel. When I think of Israel as America’s ally in the Middle East, i don’t think of far leftists. leftist Israeli should be an oxymoron. It’s not patriotic in this day and age for citizens of Israel not to band together when attacked by Islamic extremists such as Hamas, and for that matter Hezbollah and Iran
And the Israeli media is just as leftist as the US so be careful what you believe. Mike Doran and Gadi Taub do a great analysis every week - you can find them on youtube or Rumble and Amir Avivi has a morning update four times a week - IDSF. Worth following. Oh, and Amit Segal on telegram.
Bernie Sanders actually tries to prevent congressional hearings on antisemitism and the U.S. from financially assisting Israel in defending its existence. Words can't express what a vile human being he is. And I don't care what he calls himself, if he even does, or who is mother was: he is not Jewish. A real Jew doesn't doesn't directly or indirectly agitate for the annihilation of Jews.
Chuck Schumer advised Columbia University on how to evade the House investigation on campus antisemitism. This was revealed in Columbia's response to a House subpoena
Bernie Sanders, like many so called progressive Jews, is a Jewish anti-Semite. Being Jewish, or being a member any other ethnic group, doesn't preclude the person from hating said group.
If we agree on Dara Horn's definition that Am Yisroel is entity that defines Jews, everything becomes illuminated. Bernie and Chucky can call themselves anything they want -- but they do NOT belong to Am Yisroel as they don't share out values (Support Am Yisroel and thus Medinat Israel above anything else) and thus they don't share our future. As we used to say about people like them "they are of Jewish ancestry".
Do you know nothing of the Talmud and the Oral law on which Judaism as it is practiced is based? Quoting a bunch of bible verses is meaningless. You are utterly clueless. Why don’t you find something else to do? This is not working out for you.
If you were such a Talmudic expert you'd know that it isn't written in Hebrew.
You'd also know that "Gomorrah" is a city that was wiped out by God while the word you're thinking of is "Gemara." The two words don't even resemble each other in Hebrew. Can you spell "Gomorrah" in Hebrew? Do you know what "Gemara" even *means*? Do you know how a change to one of its letters can change its meaning? Let's start with that, Mr. Expert.
If you actually practiced Judaism you’d know you couldn’t open a prayer book without the mention of the Jewish people’s return to its ancient homeland which was fulfilled thankfully. And what do we say when we leave the home of a Jewish mourner?
Those poor people are probably grieving in heaven that that cute little boy decided to dump Judaism and take on Christianity, and an anti-Semitic form of it at that.
I lived in Israel for five years during the 1980’s and everything you have written is true. Everyone was living on credit and that was totally normal. I have a good Israeli friend since that time. Our politics were always different but it was never an issue. Starting about ten years ago I realized that we had to stop talking about politics at all . My friend who was always leftist started to become so strident in her criticism of Israel and I started to have difficulty about maintaining our friendship. Since October 7th she has sent me countless pictures of the demonstrations that she was attending. That was the straw that broke me. We haven’t spoken in over a year. If they don’t like Israel, then leave and go live somewhere else. Otherwise “stum ta pe”
Her husband got his Masters at Berkeley University. Little do they know that as left as his politics are,they would never accept him now as a Professor now. Many people in Israel have no idea what has been happening with Jews worldwide
Let me be clear: I am not Jewish nor do I practice any organized religion. I consider myself agnostic. But I am very clear on who is evil and who is good! I also don’t give a shit who you are or how you were raised. I do know you are a coward that hides behind a keyboard under Americas safety. I suspect you are another useful idiot that carries a “Queers for Palestine” poster. As a US Marine I’ve have killed better “men” than you, and they were Islamic Terrorists. But unlike you they were brave enough to fight for what they believed in. Take your cowardice and self hating Jewish past and shove it up your Muslim loving pussy ass. I hope that someday your unless existence will be brutally ended by a filthy goat fucking Islam worshiping cavemen. And fuck your calls for racism. I openly admit to hating Gazans and I proudly do so not based on any religious beliefs, but rather my pure hate for evil. Are we clear!!!
Your retort is to tell me I am not clear on what is good and what is evil? You are a sad excuse for a writer and are the poster child for being a loser! Be sure and share with your 1 followers…Mr. Writer!
I'm afraid to send this to my leftist friends because it's too perfect, too accurate for them to bear. Great job of succinctly explaining 76 years of Israeli history.
The leftist Jewish hypocrisy, the blindness, the ingratitude, the stupidity, the betrayal, has always been stunning. But why do the universities condone and proliferate these types. Why on earth was Ilan Pappe and Shlomo Sand in Israeli universities.
When I arrived in Toronto, after almost getting killed in the dolphinarium bombing in Israel, nobody knew of course, because nobody asked, because nobody could give two shits, after almost getting killed and witnessing much worse, I was only ever contacted by Jewish so called friends to chastise and ambush me on behalf of the Palestinian cause, without even asking my opinion or political orientation, going to Israel was proof enough of my sin.
The universities are insane. I still remember that story about the master's degree student at Hebrew U. who decided to make her thesis about how the IDF rapes Palestinian women.
So she does her research and discovers that it has never happened once. No sexual abuse whatsoever. Not even the Palestinians claim it.
So she changes her thesis to- I am not making this up- "The lack of rape proves the IDF is evil, because it means that they so dehumanize Palestinians that they don't even consider them rape-able."
Worse. The Democratic party would love to be in the position the Israeli left has been in for decades: full control of the media, academia, judiciary, upper echelons of the military; yet paying lip service to democracy by agreeing to let people put ballots in ballot boxes every so often with great fanfare.
It is only in the last few years that things are changing.
Consider: all that's supposedly become perfectly obvious on Oct. 7th, was equally obvious before the Oslo Accords, and before the Disengagement. Yet the left, with its almost total control of centers of power, shoved aside the horrified crying voices into a corner of little echo chambers, and pursued its agenda. But the left can't do so now, thanks to the rise of social media, podcasts, and a right-aligned Israeli media.
What are you talking about? Bibi has been prime minister for 14 of the last 16 years. What is this narrative that the left has been in total control coming from?
Your profile reads "now follow Jesus". You would elevate as divine someone who is dead as the doornails shoved into (lower-case h) his hands, then hypocritically babble about "pagan heresies".
That you had to self-illustrate your own book because nobody else was interested clearly demonstrates the pathetic nature of your own beliefs.
Jesus was by modern standards haredi. The book of Acts 15 details how the Jewish Church, after Jesus, excepted the Gentiles from Jewish law, and to this day the Gospel retains the passages that when Jesus was asked what is the most important commandment Jesus said the Shema. Mark 29 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.
It was the Europeans who hated and hate the Jews, Jesus did not hate the Jews. So you should be more respectful of a Jewish leader who was killed in the way you describe.
I only know American liberal Jews (I do know Israelis, but not liberal ones), so I can only discuss and describe them, but I assume there's some social and psychological overlap.
For Western liberals (Reform Jews especially), the "2-state solution" was a goal akin to a myth or fantasy, in that it allowed them to escape and hide from the reality of who and what the Palestinians really are and to safely push the issue out of mind—the conflict would be resolved eventually, a peace plan would happen eventually, simply because IT HAD TO.
Most of us have a hard time inhabiting the minds of people so different from us, so people who are educated, compassionate, reasonable (not to mention essentially secular), simply can't understand others who are essentially opposite, thus the idea of someone choosing jihad and intifada over peaceful flourishing doesn't compute. And on top of this is the ingrained arrogance of all Western liberals, who see themselves as residing at the apex of human progress, a morally and intellectually elite caste, which means they really believe that everyone on earth would choose to live just as they do, if only given the proper (re) education.
And then to this you can add how hard it is for us to give up our illusions, especially when we consider them sacred and existential, and especially when we've founded so much of our lives and psychological balance on them. Relinquishing the 2-state solution and the idea that the Palestinians would prefer to build their own society rather than devote themselves to destroying another, means liberals have to not just change their attitudes about Israel v Palestine but also about all humans and human conflict.
I think this is why we've seen all the tantrums, all the psychological projection (such as the "genocide" slander), and all the intense cowardice and double standards. For liberals to face the truth here of what the Palestinians really are (a theocratic death cult), not only would they have to revise their sacred worldviews, they might also have to fight back and defend their own people, which could threaten their social status and their easy Western lifestyles.
We've seen in the past social and political movements where believers refuse to forsake their sacred ideological beliefs, and that just might be the case here too. Sometimes people would rather die than admit they were wrong, especially when this also means admitting that the people they considered inferior to them (conservatives) were right all along.
Same here, I was a duty bound, leftist, and did not even see the hypocrisy before my very eyes. October 7 changed the world fundamentally as those of us who had been leftist for so long saw with their own eyes, our stupidity. I am now a conservative.
A young Gazan girl with a complex heart problem was sent to Israel for treatment and received the same state of the art pacemaker that Netanyahu had received from the same hospital a few months before. **The article is dated two weeks before Oct 7.**
It showed how Israeli well-intentioned charitable actions that went well beyond what was required had no effect on the Palestinian views on Jews and did nothing to moderate them.
Palestinians took the charity with one hand and prepared their weapons with the other. Israelis who thought that acting charitably would bring about peace were misled.
The two-state solution provides something else to them: They (and this is true, in perhaps different ways, for left-wing American Jews and for left-wing Israeli Jews) are terrified, consciously or not, of the idea that Israel may have some ultimate meaning, that it may be the place Jews are destined to end up, that it may have some sort of "end-times" purpose. The less land the State of Israel has, the less likely they can say that will happen. This is especially true if the historical heart of the country can be torn out, leaving a big hole in the center of a tiny, narrow strip. So they push and push for Israel to have less and less, because then it's just some normal country with some Jews in it.
Excellent analysis .. I’m a proud practising British Jew, and ardent Zionist. The lefties / liberal luvvies in any society are generally those who believe in ‘tolerant, anything goes, peace’ beliefs. Living in the diaspora, Jews should follow the mantra of Dennis Prager of Prager University .. support Israel whichever government Israel elects. There are enough Jew and Israel haters in the world, which is why Jews should not add to this hate filled virus.
One country that you omitted as being a poison and supporter of terror is Qatar .. a duplicitous nation that espouses Islamic jihad and funds the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.
As someone previously of the Israeli left, yes the assumption we can make peace with the Palestinians was wrong and created a dangerous situation. But maybe you noticed how Netanyahu’s spinelessness made things worse? Most years since Hamas took over Gaza were under Netanyahu’s leadership. Did he do anything about their rocket attacks, their actions near the fence? Did he do much after October 7, when he was speechless and disappeared from view? Can we forgive the Israeli right for the enormous amounts of Qatari cash they solicited to appease Hamas into ceasefire? The claim that the last 16 years since Hamas took over Gaza weren’t under a Likud government is ahistorical. Yes, the Oslo process was misguided, but it was also in 1993-1995. The center right gave up Gaza in 2005, and negotiated one last time with the Palestinians in 2008. It's 2025, Joshua. The Likud has reigned supreme in all that time since. The Israeli right did very little that’s right to secure the country.
We're now in a universe where the Israeli right is trying to act like it wasn't its government under whose guidance and executive control Hamas and Hezbollah were allowed to get massively threatening and out of control. The Likud helped Hamas get hundreds of millions of dollars! The Israeli right is trying to gaslight everyone to forget their incredible incompetence at responding to October 7th - the military failure, the inability to organize for the massive reservist call-up, the abandoning of evacuated civilians. The Israeli right is trying to gaslight everyone to forget they're the ones who shrunk the military (I served 3 years in a combat unit, on what basis was that shortened exactly?), or that it does everything it can to avoid adding young Haredi men to the roster of the IDF. The Israeli right brought us a Netanyahu who talks like Churchill but appeases like Chamberlain. A weak, hesitant, spineless leader that invited a Hamas offensive through his blather and inaction. A deeply unwise and corrupt leader who has intentionally polarized the country with an idiotic and undemocratic "judicial reform" intended to give all branches of government in the hands of whoever gets 61 Knesset seats - DURING A WAR.
Maybe notice there's a ton of blame to go around, that the Israeli left volunteered and showed up to fight in massive numbers, far more than the right, when you consider the Haredi not doing any of that. This article is incredibly one-sided - maybe reconsider it.
Finding your comment is the only value I got out of reading this idiotic article. It’s brilliant. By the way, while I’ve seen most of his gaslightings in other adaptations of the Bibist template, I don’t think I’d come across his literally 180 degree inversion of who caused and who fixed Israel’s hyperinflation before:
“Economically, its policies were equally disastrous. The command-and-control structure it imposed on Israel’s economy created inefficiency, corruption, and bloated bureaucracy. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, the country had been rocked by two bouts of massive inflation, culminating in a near-total economic collapse. At its worst, inflation reached over 400 percent annually. The shekel was worthless. The average Israeli couldn’t keep up with prices that changed weekly, sometimes daily.
It took a dramatic shift away from the leftist economic model — led ironically by coalitions the Left hated — to save the economy. “
Fantastic. My thoughts exactly. Thank for for saving me the time of having to write that!! (And you did a much better job than i would have!)
Joshus, i agree with some points that you're trying to make. But you are conflating everyone to the left of netanyahu: the treacherous diaspora leftist Jews and the radical antizionist scum like pappe, with people like lapid and nadav eyal, brothers in arms, hostages family forum, and many, many others in the center left who are not socialists, are fueling the economy of Israel (hi tech) and are very, very Zionist.
It's easier in hindsight but if before Oct 7 Israel had tried to reoccupy the Gaza Strip, there would have been terrible international pressures against it.
I can understand leaving Gaza in 2005 in order to divide the Palestinian leadership and make negotiations about two states, all the rage then (remember Colin Powell, US Secretary of State). But a sensible strategy in 2005 went off course 15 years later.
Nobody forced that idiot to solicit Qatar and allow the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars, right? Nobody forced him to open the border to the day workers who spied for Hamas either. The IDF and Shin Beit many times suggested aggressive action against both Hamas and Hezbollah and he was scared of initiating anything. For his weakness and strong desire to rip the country apart over “reforms” Hamas and Hezbollah felt especially bold. Enough, the man’s pathetic weakness invited war. Same goes for Obama and Biden’s pathetic weakness inviting the belligerence of Iran and its proxies, but hilariously the man most critical of those fools is himself spineless.
Sending Qatari money in was agreed-upon across the political spectrum.
Bennet was the one who increased the number of workers entering into Gaza.
Netanyahu's extreme caution needs to be balanced against the extreme criticism he received and receives from all sides. Consider: "he didn't go to war because he was too spineless", but "he did go to war because he's making political hay"; sometimes from the very same people.
Michael Oren described it in 2014:
"The antagonism sparked by Netanyahu, I gradually noticed, resembled that traditionally triggered by the Jews. We were always the ultimate Other—communists in the view of the capitalists and capitalists in communist eyes, nationalists for the cosmopolitans and, for jingoists, the International Jew. So, too, was Netanyahu declaimed as “reckless” by White House sources and incapable of decision making by many Israelis. He was branded intransigent by The New York Times, yet Haaretz faulted him for never taking a stand. Washington insiders assailed him for being out of touch with America, and the Tel Aviv branja—the intellectual elite—snubbed him for being too American. The Israeli right lambasted him for spinelessness, the left for intractability, the Ultra-Orthodox for heresy, and the secular for pandering to rabbis. All agreed in labeling Netanyahu disingenuous, imperious, and paralyzed by paranoia—qualities not uncommon among politicians."
Ah, he’s “like other politicians”, so everyone should be resign for October 7 (Halevi, Bar) EXCEPT Netanyahu. He’s such a spineless politician, and that’s so “to be expected”, that we also can’t expect him to take responsibility when he was the leader for the majority of time leading up to October 7. Fascinating logic, truly.
No, only those whose continued stay in power impedes the war effort more than anyone who might replace them.
Thankfully, there are people other than Halevi and Bar that can take their place and do a better job, not least in implementing government policy.
There is currently nobody else who can muster up enough public support to finish the war, whatever you think of Netanyahu's handling of it.
(FWIW unless he manages to topple the Iranian regime, make peace with Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, annex Judea and Samaria and Gaza and get Palestinians to voluntarily emigrate, I don't think he has a political future in Israel.)
Once the war is over, Israel needs to have a facts-based conversation about how it got to Oct. 7th (e.g. no wild accusations about Qatari money). And no, Israel won't get useful results from a state commission of inquiry run by the judiciary that will completely ignore the judiciary's role in drastically reducing the effectiveness of the IDF over the years. There needs to be an investigative mechanism that has broad powers, and broad support from across the political spectrum, with a focus less on finger-pointing and more on actionable policies that need to change.
That's true: the initial strategy of splitting Palestinian leadership was good but keeping it under control failed.
Despite his image, Netanyahu has always been very cautious and that failed in Gaza. The cost of keeping Gaza quiet was paid by Qatar money, guest workers and, eventually, by a strong Hamas on the border.
Judicial reform is a separate topic as is the public reaction to it and the way the govt tried to ram it through. If the US Supreme Court had anywhere near the powers of the Israeli one, there would be riots in the US. Our Constitution carefully delimited the powers of each branch of government. Here is an article written 18 years ago by Richard Posner, a well known expert in Constitutional Law, on the need for judicial reform in Israel
Sorry, the word “constitution” is exactly the one to consider. The US has one, Israel does not. The US had three coequal branches of government balancing each other, Israel has barely two, and with this “reform” Israel would have one branch of government and no constitution- basically turning into Turkey or Egypt. You get the point?
Right now the Supreme Court are forcing the government to finally recruit the Haredi on the basis of equality before the law. It is illegal to force secular Jews to serve and pay taxes, while Haredi do not, and effectively each of their families costs $35K/year to the taxpayer. Without a constitution and with full government control of the courts, suddenly such laws become totally “legal” and “reasonable”.
Are you willing for the US to become a single branch of government with no constitution? I am sure aren’t.
With this reform Israel would turn into the UK or Canada, where parliament has complete power. Parliamentary systems are ripe for abuse and we've seen that happen recently in both UK and Canada, as VP Vance pointed out in his Munich speech.
That's why the ideal would be to adopt a version of the US Constitution in Israel, including its Bill of Rights.
A long time ago I was active with the “constitution for Israel” movement. It only partially did the job because politicians don’t like change once they figured out how to game the system. The UK has the equivalent of a piecemeal constitution. Our own in the US is based on Magna Carta and others.
Before a constitution, Israel should become a single branch of government, with a government that has proven it wants to force laws that take away basic civil rights as well as allow unequal treatment before the law (laws that only apply to secular Jews but not Haredi ones).
Thank you Arrr Bee for this return to balance and reality. While I'm generally a fan of Joshua's essays, I found this one to be deeply–and dangerously–one sided, ignoring as it did the fact that Likud and Netanyahu have been dominant for the great majority of the period since 2009.
It is possible, and in this case necessary, to hold two thoughts simultaneously--first, that Hamas is evil and bears 100% of the responsibility for Oct 7 and its sequelae, and second, that the Netanyahu government's strategy, decisions and failures contributed to Hamas' ability to perpetrate the atrocities of Oct 7, to the deaths of more hostages than absolutely necessary, and to a strategic vacuum regarding what happens after the war.
When even knowledgeable commentators choose to indulge in self-righteous dudgeon, and elide past facts that are inconvenient to their arguments, the more the risk of division and self-destruction.
The judicial reform was the right idea. The problems with the judiciary date back to one of Menachem Begin's "foundational principles for governance" which was a concept called the "Supremacy of the Law".
It's based on a certain world view I have heard from other Jews from time to time in which they believe that it all boils down to the law. I.e., Criminal governments break the law by violating citizens rights. An all powerful judiciary would invalidate any attempts to do so.
"the Supremacy of Law,’ which is to say, establishing civil liberties as a ‘Basic Law’ or ‘Supreme Law’, and granting authority to a panel of judges to invalidate a law which contradicts the Basic Law by contradicting civil liberties."
Arre Bee, you can see in today's polarized and politicized social climate how difficult it would be to have an unbiased judiciary in the ICC etc, and that was precisely the problem in Israel, from long before Oct 7.
The judiciary was full of leftist ideologues, and it was more of a problem than a solution or a safe guard of civil liberties in times of extreme political polarization such as nowadays.
Sorry, in a shitty parliamentary system like Israel (where MPs don't get elected locally, but instead allocated down from the party based on portion of the 120 seat Knesset) there's already a unitary executive and legislative. In lieu of a constitution, there's exactly one check on the executive+legislative unified branch. It is unreasonable to expect a reform that gives a party with 51% of the vote complete unchecked power over all three branches of government. Pass a constitution first, then people will support things like a judicial reform.
My point is the utter stupidity of returning in the middle of a FUCKING EXISTENTIAL WAR to a judicial reform that barely half the country support, which before the war had a year of constant demonstrations that involved a massive part of the country. Before people lecture the center left about how it's allegedly unpatriotic, I want to understand why a government of a slim majority needs to overhaul everything, just to give the Haredi a pass on military service. This is really what it's about - the governing coalition being pissy that the supreme court struck down an infinite deferment for Haredi men on the basis of equality before the law. So you want Israel to have no constitution, a slim majority owning all branches of government unchecked, and also laws passed that tax and force longer conscription on the secular majority and national orthodox, while the Haredi get a pass from serving, working, paying taxes (forget that, they get $35K/year per family on average in welfare).
He also betrayed the same voter base who entrusted him with their representation.
The reform needed for Haredim is for Israel to stop trying to impose a secular Zionism on Haredim and the Jewish people. Haredim can integrate perfectly well into a society which sees itself as Judaic - defined by Judaism; Zionism, for all its benefits, is not that.
The State of Israel was founded by and on and through Zionism. It is arguably the only ever successful political movement the Jewish people have ever had.
So the leadership of the Haredim should get off their high horse and prepare for some reciprocity.
11 out of 12 of the first yishuvim were founded by Haredim. Nothing would have happened here if not for the blood, sweat and tears poured into the arid ground decades before Zionism was conceived.
We don't really know what might have happened post World War 1, if the British Mandate would have been established opposite the old yishuv instead of the Jewish Agency. But the early Zionists made that impossible, by "diverting" (stealing) funds earmarked for the old yishuv during and after the war, making themselves the sole representatives of the entire Jewish people, sidelining the old yishuv with every tool at their disposal up to and including political assassination, and denying visas to religious Jews during the period before the Holocaust to create a secular hegemony.
When Weizman tried to push educational reforms on the old yishuv and was sharply rebuffed, he claimed in retaliation to have found 300 prostitutes in the old yishuv. That demonization has continued up to today, hoping against hope that maybe the Haredim will give up and become secular. (Much like Palestinians hoping the Jews will go back to Brooklyn.)
So when Haredim say the army is systemically anti-Judaism and therefore they cannot participate in a universal military draft, perhaps people should get off their high horse, focus on facts, and ask - perhaps it's time for the IDF to be a Jewish army, focused on winning; instead of an engine for promoting feminism, climate change and other progressive values in society? Maybe if the IDF did so, we might not have gotten Oct. 7th?
Which "benefits"? The right to vote? To own property? Fair trial?
Would you leave Haredi diabetics and cancer patients to die in the streets for lack of nationalized healthcare?
Will you force them to pay for an ineffective educational system they neither want or need, as well as paying for the education of their children out of pocket?
Are the Haredi handicapped to be forced into the workplace because 80% of women and 50% of men working isn't enough, and you're holding out for universal employment?
But in order to be consistent, you have to excuse Haredim from all taxes - 18% VAT, 50% automobile taxes, high property taxes. Are you willing to do so?
So you want to deny kollel subsidies, because you see no value in full-time Torah learning. That's a reasonable position, to deny low-income families whose head-of-household is engaged in full time Torah study, the monthly 1000 NIS that might make the difference between milk on the table or none. It'll definitely make a dent in Israel's 500 billion dollar budget. Will it force those Haredim engaged in full time Torah study to leave? Probably not; they'll do their best to make every shekel stretch, as do Haredim in general - Haredi households statistically live within their means, more so than in the general population.
So we need to understand: where does this shrill narrative of Haredim as useless layabout parasites come from? Is it factual and rational? Or is it emotional and fear-driven?
The purpose of democracy is to determine a consensus on proper policy; checks and balances, and a constitution, are only mechanisms in figuring that consensus out.
Thus when you have a consensus from the representatives chosen by the people that there should be no humanitarian aid to Gaza, and the IDF should hold the territory it has cleansed of terrorists; and the military echelon and judiciary collude in preventing those policies from happening; both judicial reform and shaking up of the military echelon are vitally necessary, precisely because Israel is in an existential war, a war could have been over in January of last year.
And so, when Haredim refuse to serve because they claim - and the national Orthodox agree - that the army is systemically anti-Judaism, and erodes Jewish belief and practice in most of its religious soldiers; there's a national consensus behind them. Or at least, a national consensus that Haredi political support is more important to successfully continue and end the war, than forcing a universal Haredi draft whose recruits will only first see service (hopefully) long after the war is over.
You are implicitly arguing that Haredim don't count because they place Judaism before the state and therefore refuse a universal draft; and because 80% of women and more than 50% of men working isn't enough, as you're holding out for universal employment before the Haredim count in democratic Israel.
But the judicial reform had a democratic consensus, composed of multiple parties, yet you dismiss such consensus because it doesn't line up with your views. How many others in your "democratic" Israel will you say simply shouldn't count for one reason or another?
Let's focus please on the systemic failure of the army to focus on winning, the centralization and regulation that drive up prices and taxes, and the imposition by judicial fiat of political positions unsupported by virtually all Israelis.
"checks and balances, and a constitution, are only mechanisms in figuring that consensus out"
Wrong: checks and balances and the constitution are to provide a balance between rule of the majority and individual rights. Otherwise a majority could erase the rights of any individual and call that democratic; it would be the rule of the mob.
That is the genius behind the US Constitution:it provides a Bill of Rights that applies to everyone (because of the 14th Amendment) and grants individual rights that the majority might not like but has to live with (like the right to drive through Bnei-Brak on Shabbat). It also prevents any one branch of government from becoming dominant.
"the IDF should hold the territory it has cleansed of terrorists" Feel free to put on a uniform, grab a rifle and go help out. Otherwise don't presume to tell the IDF what to do if you're not going to share the risk.
The Putney Debates after the English Civil War were the first modern discussions of how democracy should work. Participants were torn between allowing foreigners to vote, or requiring some wealth to vote, or requiring military service to vote. One citizen - one vote was one of many options.
For Israel, the ideal might be one citizen - one vote; one soldier - one vote; thus one citizen-soldier - two votes.
"checks and balances and the constitution are to provide a balance between rule of the majority and individual rights"
That's true of the US constitution, for which personal liberty is self-evidently a blessing ("and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity"). The US constitution reflects the foundational values of American society.
In contrast, the UAE constitution https://www.uaelegislation.gov.ae/en/constitution says quite clearly "Islam is the official religion of the UAE. The Islamic Shari'a is a main source of legislation in the UAE." because - like it or not - Islam is a foundational value of the societies of the UAE. Are you arguing that the UAE constitution isn't one?
And so, the only definition of "constitution" that covers both is "a document that lays out how the government is supposed to carry out those fundamental values."
Checks and balances falls under the same heading: because individual liberties are so foundational to American society, each branch is prevented from overstepping its authority, and thus potentially violating individual freedoms.
(BTW, why do you think it's an inherent right to drive through Beni Brak on Shabbat? Is it also an inherent right to be able to drive through a residential neighborhood at four in the morning with speakers blasting and open windows?)
"Feel free to put on a uniform, grab a rifle and go help out. Otherwise don't presume to tell the IDF what to do if you're not going to share the risk."
It would indeed be presumptuous of me to criticize the IDF this way. But I'm only echoing the criticisms of people who have put their lives on the line and are intimately familiar with the IDF and its strategies, such as Amir Avivi, Yair Ansbacher and Einat Wilf.
I'm also arguing that the underlying source of these failings, and the army's inability to include Haredim, is the same.
But why is it that all the supporters of the judicial reform who did serve, just barely managed to move the needle in the slightest. How does that square with your ideal of a citizen-soldier getting an extra vote?
You seem to think all Constitutions are created equal, US and UAE.
Nothing is further from the truth: the US Constitution is a work of genius, consciously informed by writers from the Enlightenment, especially Locke and Montesquieu, who developed the ideas of limited government and separation of powers. The very idea that such a work of genius could have been reproduced more than once, and by a mere desert kingdom at that, is preposterous. The use by Macron of Article 43 in the French Constitution to pass his pension law without approval from the National Assembly shows that even developed countries failed to match America's Founding Fathers. Recent restrictions on free speech in the UK are yet another example.
(Indeed, I am proud to be an American Exceptionalist and Israel could do no better that adopt, with minimal changes, the US Constitution for itself.)
A quick check on Tel Aviv beaches and nightclubs during holidays will show the preferences of a large segment of the population. Using a road normally on Shabbat is not the same as using a road abnormally to make noise.
Whatever the failings of the IDF, they were failings of those who tried, who risked their lives yet might have done better. Those who did not try at all have no right to judge, as Theodore Roosevelt said in his famous speech "The Man in the Arena"
Two votes for citizen-soldiers does not mean they would all agree on the same thing. It means that those who risk their lives have greater say in the direction of the country than those who do not. Two votes for each of them only guarantees that they dominate national decision making, as they should.
When you have no constitution, and a 51% majority holding automatically both legislative and executive branches, if it also controls the judiciary you get a sham democracy like Turkey and Egypt.
Do you know how democracy works? Does a majority override basic rights? Does it get to conscript 2/3rds of the country to three years of military service and absolve 1/3 of it?
Does a majority get to take your right to vote away?
Does it get to violate freedom of worship, by insisting Jews participate in institutions that indoctrinate against Judaism?
The problem is everybody has different ideas of what those basic rights might be, and - more importantly - which rights take precedence?
Organizing a Nazi protest in Germany gets you fines and imprisonment of up to five years. In the US, you can get police protection. Why? There's a conflict here between two rights: freedom of expression, and protection from hate speech. Germany (in no small part due to its history) has prioritized protection from hate speech; the US prioritizes freedom of expression.
And yes, the only thing that stands in the way of the majority denying certain people the right to vote, is the self-interest of the pluralism of the majority. In other words, the only thing preventing the majority - composed of blonds, brown-haired and black-haired - from deciding redheads shouldn't vote, is the realization that if the redheads come into power they may decide one of the other groups shouldn't be allowed to vote. But that is an extraordinarily powerful incentive.
Checks and balances, and a constitution, are only mechanisms for pushing such a denial of voting rights further away; they don't make it impossible.
You speak as if there isn’t already a Haredi combat battalion. But there is, נצח יהודה
Following that template the army is prepared to recruit more Haredi youth.
It’s not complicated - a democracy has both rights and obligations. They can serve in Haredi only units or they can leave the country to whichever other country suits their way of life. They do not get or obligate the majority of Israel to fund them with an average of $35K/year of welfare per family as well as serve exceedingly longer periods to defend the country while the Haredi do not.
Equal protection before the law means that all citizens carry an even burden. Their freedom of expression is not constrained. If they believe that they get to both get massive welfare and protection and not serve, they can move to the US or elsewhere were the get less welfare and need to work and don’t need to serve.
We have no need to test, at least WRT Shabbat. A majority of Knesset members are personally Shabbat-observant; it is unlikely in the extreme that those who recognize the importance of Shabbat in their personal lives would accept it being violated on the national level.
More, nobody is denying anyone in Israel the ability to eat as many cheeseburgers as they like, whether in a car on Shabbat, or outside it. But we're talking about the public sphere being a Jewish one, for both ideological and practical reasons.
I imagine there are people interested in displaying a Nazi flag, even in Israel. Nobody would deny them the right to do so in the privacy of their own home; but in the public sphere it's a different story.
I largely agree with you. One can understand the diaspora Jews like Thomas Friedman continuing their delusions. They pay no price for doing so. The Israeli left is almost suicidal. One thing though. The strategic weakness that Israel has projected since Oslo has been the policy of Netanyahu since the beginning of his second term. He cannot be exempt from complicity.
Sadly, history has shown that there will always be Jews who embrace the Left, regardless of facts and circumstances. We can only hope that they remain in the minority and don’t do too much damage to the majority (in Israel at least) who recognize reality.
The Left today, in Israel and in the US, has little in common with the Left of 50 years ago. US Democrats wouldn't choose a JFK today and Meretz wouldn't choose a Shimon Peres either.
Why? It’s like trying to fix a marriage by yourself if you are married to a spousal abuser. You can’t fix a marriage by yourself. You can’t make peace by yourself. The Gazans who worked ‘alongside’ the peaceniks of the Gaza envelope kibbutz literally gave to Hamas all the information about the kibbutz in order to better slaughter the people.
Of course they did. They even took down names of all the people who attended a peace event with them. The Gazan photographer who was exhibited as part of a "peace" display took notes and sent them back.
I’m a survivor and I choose to keep on living and winning. The hatred and fear of leftists like you doesn’t concern me one bit. I’ve been called worse by better.
Your contempt for Vivian and Ofed and Naama and the entirety of Jewish history is an example of how much you have lost. You are no winner. And having looked at your profile, I suspect you are more troll than Jew. So fuck off. Caritas Cupid…
Contempt for Jewish history? As determined by you of course! No, I don't conflate marxism and Judaism. Silvers loss is lost on you, but its expected. Often the ones who need to hear something critically important are the least likely to listen. Like you, miss 2 subscriber big shot Tamara.
And now a troll who claims to believe in Jesus yet spews antisemitic language and pretending to be a leftie convert from. This entire substack need sot be retired.
Let me be clear: I am not Jewish nor do I practice any organized religion. I consider myself agnostic. But I am very clear on who is evil and who is good! I also don’t give a shit who you are or how you were raised. I do know you are a coward that hides behind a keyboard under Americas safety. I suspect you are another useful idiot that carries a “Queers for Palestine” poster. As a US Marine I’ve have killed better “men” than you, and they were Islamic Terrorists. But unlike you they were brave enough to fight for what they believed in. Take your cowardice and self hating Jewish past and shove it up your Muslim loving pussy ass. I hope that someday your unless existence will be brutally ended by a filthy goat fucking Islam worshiping cavemen. And fuck your calls for racism. I openly admit to hating Gazans and I proudly do so not based on any religious beliefs, but rather my hatred for pure evil! Are we clear!!!
A very painful truth. Don’t forget the leftist Jews in the diaspora. Giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
Lefty Jews are a plague
In Israel, and the U.S
Wow!!! Where were you when the Schutzstaffel were recruiting for their camp stay-vacation get aways.
Given your obvious hatred of Jews, Judaism, Israel, all things Jewish, as well as the right of Jews to self-determination in their ancestral homeland — the same right granted to Europeans, Asians, etc. in their homelands — why are you on this site when you could be enjoying confirmation bias on so many AltL and AltR antisemitic sites?
Yawn
1000%
Brilliant Nathan! I love how you use the comedic device of repetition to drive home your excellent satyrical point. Usually in comedy it's three, but your tenth cut-and-paste further down in the comments worked beautifully to underscore the nail-on-the-head truth of Hoffman's essay.
Fun slogan. I'll bet you can recite it out loud while using your brain to do simple math. Well done!
I wonder what you would say to Gd who told the Jews to drive out all their enemies?
And a son of the B'nei Korach stood up amongst the multitude and with a voice of mighty righteousness roared all should rise up against those who slay the slayers of Israel as she sleep in her tents.
Edward, saw your profile on Substack. It explains your internal conflict.
The central tenet of Christianity is the Trinity, the worship of three gods. Worshiping anything more than one god is polytheism.
The central tenet of Judaism is the worship of one, indivisible god. This is monotheism.
A Christian rejecting Trinitarian belief does not automatically become Jewish. On the other hand, anyone who worships the Trinity can not be a Jew, regardless whatever rituals he practices or prayers he recites. He is a Christian. For Jews any other doctrine violates the fundamental tenet upon which all of Judaism rests, that God is One and Indivisible
There are certain problems with core Christian doctrine, something the Church would call theological errors. Consider the following:
In the Synoptic Gospels, God Himself nowhere appears. The only hint of God putting in an appearance is a voice out the sky (Mat. 3:17, Mark 1:11, and Luke 3:22 and even here the stories differ in detail); a voice out of a cloud (Mat. 17:5, Mark 9:7, and Luke 9:35); and John 12:28, but in a different context. On each of these three occasions no one around Jesus reacted to such a momentous event as hearing the (purported) Voice of God, making the accounts a revelation confined to Jesus alone rather than one shared by the public.
Two other very serious problems arise in Torah:
God stopped Abraham from slaying Isaac because he abhorred child sacrifice.
Lev. 18:21: God prohibits child sacrifice to Moloch. Does this mean he would allow child sacrifice to any other god? To himself contrary to Gen. 22:11-12 where he commanded Abraham to cease and desist?
Then in Lev. 18:23 God expressly forbade men and women to lie with beasts declaring it an abomination (תֶּבֶל). Man is closer to animals than God is to humans. Would God violate his own commandments? Would God lie with a creature that is lower to Him than beasts are to humans?
Side Note: In many, many pagan religions, a deity, usually male, mates with a human, usually a female, to produce a semi-divine creature called a demigod. In essence, then, Jesus would be just such a figure — a demigod. Sometimes the demigod dies: sometimes after his work on earth is done, he is raised to heaven. Sound familiar?
God labelled worship of multiple gods, child sacrifice, and sex with inferior creatures abominations Lev. 18:26 and absolutely forbade their practice. Lev 18:26 Not to mention that God strictly forbade the worship of any other god than Himself (see 10 Commandments).
Thus, worshipping three gods, one being a demigod, clearly violates the first of God's holy commandment to His followers.
Also interesting to note is that Jesus was born to Jewish parents, was circumcised according to Jewish law, was bar Mitzvahed, prayed at the Holy Temple, and not only never renounced Torah but told his followers that Torah was in full force and effect until he returned. The world is still waiting some 2,000 years later with no sign of return in sight. The one who ditched it was Paul, who set himself above his "master."
Several considerations arise from Jesus' Jewishness, a religion he practiced and never repudiated nor renounced.
Firstly, is that one cannot go wrong worshipping the God he worshipped.
Secondly, why would I, a Jew, want to get down on my knees and worship a Jew when I am already one?
Thirdly, it might be dicey coming before God in the Afterlife and telling Him you worshipped more than one god. Generally speaking not an advisable thing to do when dealing with the Supreme Deity.
Speaking as a physician, your rants convey the feel of mental illness. While I am unable to provide a definitive diagnosis on this basis, I would counsel you to seek help.
Really
He seems to have had a very traumatic childhood and still behaves like one.
As an American, it pains me to read this. Here we have what I call JINOS, such as Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer. I seriously had no idea that such leftist extremists lived in Israel. When I think of Israel as America’s ally in the Middle East, i don’t think of far leftists. leftist Israeli should be an oxymoron. It’s not patriotic in this day and age for citizens of Israel not to band together when attacked by Islamic extremists such as Hamas, and for that matter Hezbollah and Iran
And the Israeli media is just as leftist as the US so be careful what you believe. Mike Doran and Gadi Taub do a great analysis every week - you can find them on youtube or Rumble and Amir Avivi has a morning update four times a week - IDSF. Worth following. Oh, and Amit Segal on telegram.
You’re a Christian now so who gives a shyte what you “think”
Bernie Sanders actually tries to prevent congressional hearings on antisemitism and the U.S. from financially assisting Israel in defending its existence. Words can't express what a vile human being he is. And I don't care what he calls himself, if he even does, or who is mother was: he is not Jewish. A real Jew doesn't doesn't directly or indirectly agitate for the annihilation of Jews.
Chuck Schumer advised Columbia University on how to evade the House investigation on campus antisemitism. This was revealed in Columbia's response to a House subpoena
https://freebeacon.com/campus/best-strategy-is-to-keep-heads-down-schumer-advised-columbias-leaders-to-ignore-anti-semitism-backlash-saying-their-problems-are-really-only-among-republicans/
Nothing spells kappo like that.
Bernie Sanders, like many so called progressive Jews, is a Jewish anti-Semite. Being Jewish, or being a member any other ethnic group, doesn't preclude the person from hating said group.
If we agree on Dara Horn's definition that Am Yisroel is entity that defines Jews, everything becomes illuminated. Bernie and Chucky can call themselves anything they want -- but they do NOT belong to Am Yisroel as they don't share out values (Support Am Yisroel and thus Medinat Israel above anything else) and thus they don't share our future. As we used to say about people like them "they are of Jewish ancestry".
Keep saying it over and over it doesn’t make it true.you’re boring and stupid.
Do you know nothing of the Talmud and the Oral law on which Judaism as it is practiced is based? Quoting a bunch of bible verses is meaningless. You are utterly clueless. Why don’t you find something else to do? This is not working out for you.
If you were such a Talmudic expert you'd know that it isn't written in Hebrew.
You'd also know that "Gomorrah" is a city that was wiped out by God while the word you're thinking of is "Gemara." The two words don't even resemble each other in Hebrew. Can you spell "Gomorrah" in Hebrew? Do you know what "Gemara" even *means*? Do you know how a change to one of its letters can change its meaning? Let's start with that, Mr. Expert.
If you actually practiced Judaism you’d know you couldn’t open a prayer book without the mention of the Jewish people’s return to its ancient homeland which was fulfilled thankfully. And what do we say when we leave the home of a Jewish mourner?
You know nothing about Jewish law.
He likes to hear himself talk.
So let's try one simple question: What do Rashi and the Rambam have to say about the Zohar?
Really I’m not going to read any of your shit posts.
Edward. Go fuck off. You deranged. Get help.
Ed is a graduate of Trump University. Fly that freak flag proudly Eddy boy.
Those poor people are probably grieving in heaven that that cute little boy decided to dump Judaism and take on Christianity, and an anti-Semitic form of it at that.
I lived in Israel for five years during the 1980’s and everything you have written is true. Everyone was living on credit and that was totally normal. I have a good Israeli friend since that time. Our politics were always different but it was never an issue. Starting about ten years ago I realized that we had to stop talking about politics at all . My friend who was always leftist started to become so strident in her criticism of Israel and I started to have difficulty about maintaining our friendship. Since October 7th she has sent me countless pictures of the demonstrations that she was attending. That was the straw that broke me. We haven’t spoken in over a year. If they don’t like Israel, then leave and go live somewhere else. Otherwise “stum ta pe”
Your former Israeli friend is not worthy of Israeli citizenship, and she should get out, but definitely don’t want her in America.
Her husband got his Masters at Berkeley University. Little do they know that as left as his politics are,they would never accept him now as a Professor now. Many people in Israel have no idea what has been happening with Jews worldwide
Berkeley…that tells me everything I need to know. Leftist anti American and antisemitic institution of subversive learning
And... it was VERY much a safe house filled with 'intelligent' Jewish professors and students. FILLED. Future Left of the Lefts Jewish ones.
Let me be clear: I am not Jewish nor do I practice any organized religion. I consider myself agnostic. But I am very clear on who is evil and who is good! I also don’t give a shit who you are or how you were raised. I do know you are a coward that hides behind a keyboard under Americas safety. I suspect you are another useful idiot that carries a “Queers for Palestine” poster. As a US Marine I’ve have killed better “men” than you, and they were Islamic Terrorists. But unlike you they were brave enough to fight for what they believed in. Take your cowardice and self hating Jewish past and shove it up your Muslim loving pussy ass. I hope that someday your unless existence will be brutally ended by a filthy goat fucking Islam worshiping cavemen. And fuck your calls for racism. I openly admit to hating Gazans and I proudly do so not based on any religious beliefs, but rather my pure hate for evil. Are we clear!!!
Don't bother, he's a Jew for Jesus who seems to adopted anti-Semitism together with Christianity. He invaded another board I read too.
Notice the pussy has now deleted all his comments…what a gutless wimp
Hey Ed, you consider yourself a writer but only have 1 single person following you…you are the very definition of a LOSER!
🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱
Your retort is to tell me I am not clear on what is good and what is evil? You are a sad excuse for a writer and are the poster child for being a loser! Be sure and share with your 1 followers…Mr. Writer!
Hey Ed, you consider yourself a writer but only have 1 single person following you…you are the very definition of a LOSER!
I don’t eat hotdogs…that’s for stuffing up your ass along with your goat fucking buddies…I hear they love pork!
My judge is a bullet to the forehead pussy
I'm afraid to send this to my leftist friends because it's too perfect, too accurate for them to bear. Great job of succinctly explaining 76 years of Israeli history.
The leftist Jewish hypocrisy, the blindness, the ingratitude, the stupidity, the betrayal, has always been stunning. But why do the universities condone and proliferate these types. Why on earth was Ilan Pappe and Shlomo Sand in Israeli universities.
When I arrived in Toronto, after almost getting killed in the dolphinarium bombing in Israel, nobody knew of course, because nobody asked, because nobody could give two shits, after almost getting killed and witnessing much worse, I was only ever contacted by Jewish so called friends to chastise and ambush me on behalf of the Palestinian cause, without even asking my opinion or political orientation, going to Israel was proof enough of my sin.
The universities are insane. I still remember that story about the master's degree student at Hebrew U. who decided to make her thesis about how the IDF rapes Palestinian women.
So she does her research and discovers that it has never happened once. No sexual abuse whatsoever. Not even the Palestinians claim it.
So she changes her thesis to- I am not making this up- "The lack of rape proves the IDF is evil, because it means that they so dehumanize Palestinians that they don't even consider them rape-able."
She got her degree, of course.
This is an unbelievable story. Thanks for sharing and thank gd that your survived such a tragic event.
It sounds like Israel has its own country-hating Democrat party.
It does! I feel about the American Left the way Joshua feels about the Israeli Left.
Worse. The Democratic party would love to be in the position the Israeli left has been in for decades: full control of the media, academia, judiciary, upper echelons of the military; yet paying lip service to democracy by agreeing to let people put ballots in ballot boxes every so often with great fanfare.
It is only in the last few years that things are changing.
Consider: all that's supposedly become perfectly obvious on Oct. 7th, was equally obvious before the Oslo Accords, and before the Disengagement. Yet the left, with its almost total control of centers of power, shoved aside the horrified crying voices into a corner of little echo chambers, and pursued its agenda. But the left can't do so now, thanks to the rise of social media, podcasts, and a right-aligned Israeli media.
What are you talking about? Bibi has been prime minister for 14 of the last 16 years. What is this narrative that the left has been in total control coming from?
The media. This isn't hard.
Your profile reads "now follow Jesus". You would elevate as divine someone who is dead as the doornails shoved into (lower-case h) his hands, then hypocritically babble about "pagan heresies".
That you had to self-illustrate your own book because nobody else was interested clearly demonstrates the pathetic nature of your own beliefs.
Jesus was by modern standards haredi. The book of Acts 15 details how the Jewish Church, after Jesus, excepted the Gentiles from Jewish law, and to this day the Gospel retains the passages that when Jesus was asked what is the most important commandment Jesus said the Shema. Mark 29 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.
It was the Europeans who hated and hate the Jews, Jesus did not hate the Jews. So you should be more respectful of a Jewish leader who was killed in the way you describe.
I only know American liberal Jews (I do know Israelis, but not liberal ones), so I can only discuss and describe them, but I assume there's some social and psychological overlap.
For Western liberals (Reform Jews especially), the "2-state solution" was a goal akin to a myth or fantasy, in that it allowed them to escape and hide from the reality of who and what the Palestinians really are and to safely push the issue out of mind—the conflict would be resolved eventually, a peace plan would happen eventually, simply because IT HAD TO.
Most of us have a hard time inhabiting the minds of people so different from us, so people who are educated, compassionate, reasonable (not to mention essentially secular), simply can't understand others who are essentially opposite, thus the idea of someone choosing jihad and intifada over peaceful flourishing doesn't compute. And on top of this is the ingrained arrogance of all Western liberals, who see themselves as residing at the apex of human progress, a morally and intellectually elite caste, which means they really believe that everyone on earth would choose to live just as they do, if only given the proper (re) education.
And then to this you can add how hard it is for us to give up our illusions, especially when we consider them sacred and existential, and especially when we've founded so much of our lives and psychological balance on them. Relinquishing the 2-state solution and the idea that the Palestinians would prefer to build their own society rather than devote themselves to destroying another, means liberals have to not just change their attitudes about Israel v Palestine but also about all humans and human conflict.
I think this is why we've seen all the tantrums, all the psychological projection (such as the "genocide" slander), and all the intense cowardice and double standards. For liberals to face the truth here of what the Palestinians really are (a theocratic death cult), not only would they have to revise their sacred worldviews, they might also have to fight back and defend their own people, which could threaten their social status and their easy Western lifestyles.
We've seen in the past social and political movements where believers refuse to forsake their sacred ideological beliefs, and that just might be the case here too. Sometimes people would rather die than admit they were wrong, especially when this also means admitting that the people they considered inferior to them (conservatives) were right all along.
It is easier to fool people, than it is for people to admit that they have been fooled
I was fooled for decades. I admit it was my own fault for taking things on trust and not researching the whole issue properly.
Same here, I was a duty bound, leftist, and did not even see the hypocrisy before my very eyes. October 7 changed the world fundamentally as those of us who had been leftist for so long saw with their own eyes, our stupidity. I am now a conservative.
so much easier!
Here is the article that crystallized it all for me:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-israeli-first-gazan-girl-receives-new-kind-of-pacemaker-in-innovative-procedure/
A young Gazan girl with a complex heart problem was sent to Israel for treatment and received the same state of the art pacemaker that Netanyahu had received from the same hospital a few months before. **The article is dated two weeks before Oct 7.**
Can you put into words how it crystallized things for you? I appreciate your sharing this article.
It showed how Israeli well-intentioned charitable actions that went well beyond what was required had no effect on the Palestinian views on Jews and did nothing to moderate them.
Palestinians took the charity with one hand and prepared their weapons with the other. Israelis who thought that acting charitably would bring about peace were misled.
This is a lesson that should never be forgotten.
There are cases of mothers bringing their kids to Israel for medical treatment and trying to sneak bombs in.
Perhaps this lifesaving act had an impact on the fami
Unlikely: released hostages say they did not encounter a single Gazan, not even children, willing to help them in even the most minor way.
Israel offered full safety and a $5M reward for helping find hostages; no Gazan took it up.
In the Middle East, well-intentioned, charitable people are taken advantage of and later murdered.
Sinwar's life was saved by Israel- they removed his brain tumor. He went back to Gaza and engineered the murder of thousands of Jews.
Perhaps this lifesaving act did have an impact on the patient and her family but I understand that in general the efforts towards peace failed.
The two-state solution provides something else to them: They (and this is true, in perhaps different ways, for left-wing American Jews and for left-wing Israeli Jews) are terrified, consciously or not, of the idea that Israel may have some ultimate meaning, that it may be the place Jews are destined to end up, that it may have some sort of "end-times" purpose. The less land the State of Israel has, the less likely they can say that will happen. This is especially true if the historical heart of the country can be torn out, leaving a big hole in the center of a tiny, narrow strip. So they push and push for Israel to have less and less, because then it's just some normal country with some Jews in it.
Excellent analysis .. I’m a proud practising British Jew, and ardent Zionist. The lefties / liberal luvvies in any society are generally those who believe in ‘tolerant, anything goes, peace’ beliefs. Living in the diaspora, Jews should follow the mantra of Dennis Prager of Prager University .. support Israel whichever government Israel elects. There are enough Jew and Israel haters in the world, which is why Jews should not add to this hate filled virus.
One country that you omitted as being a poison and supporter of terror is Qatar .. a duplicitous nation that espouses Islamic jihad and funds the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.
He omitted it because his boss is frantically running around trying to convince everyone it doesn’t exist
As someone previously of the Israeli left, yes the assumption we can make peace with the Palestinians was wrong and created a dangerous situation. But maybe you noticed how Netanyahu’s spinelessness made things worse? Most years since Hamas took over Gaza were under Netanyahu’s leadership. Did he do anything about their rocket attacks, their actions near the fence? Did he do much after October 7, when he was speechless and disappeared from view? Can we forgive the Israeli right for the enormous amounts of Qatari cash they solicited to appease Hamas into ceasefire? The claim that the last 16 years since Hamas took over Gaza weren’t under a Likud government is ahistorical. Yes, the Oslo process was misguided, but it was also in 1993-1995. The center right gave up Gaza in 2005, and negotiated one last time with the Palestinians in 2008. It's 2025, Joshua. The Likud has reigned supreme in all that time since. The Israeli right did very little that’s right to secure the country.
We're now in a universe where the Israeli right is trying to act like it wasn't its government under whose guidance and executive control Hamas and Hezbollah were allowed to get massively threatening and out of control. The Likud helped Hamas get hundreds of millions of dollars! The Israeli right is trying to gaslight everyone to forget their incredible incompetence at responding to October 7th - the military failure, the inability to organize for the massive reservist call-up, the abandoning of evacuated civilians. The Israeli right is trying to gaslight everyone to forget they're the ones who shrunk the military (I served 3 years in a combat unit, on what basis was that shortened exactly?), or that it does everything it can to avoid adding young Haredi men to the roster of the IDF. The Israeli right brought us a Netanyahu who talks like Churchill but appeases like Chamberlain. A weak, hesitant, spineless leader that invited a Hamas offensive through his blather and inaction. A deeply unwise and corrupt leader who has intentionally polarized the country with an idiotic and undemocratic "judicial reform" intended to give all branches of government in the hands of whoever gets 61 Knesset seats - DURING A WAR.
Maybe notice there's a ton of blame to go around, that the Israeli left volunteered and showed up to fight in massive numbers, far more than the right, when you consider the Haredi not doing any of that. This article is incredibly one-sided - maybe reconsider it.
I agree that the Israeli Right also has problems and they should not be overlooked or under-scrutinized.
Finding your comment is the only value I got out of reading this idiotic article. It’s brilliant. By the way, while I’ve seen most of his gaslightings in other adaptations of the Bibist template, I don’t think I’d come across his literally 180 degree inversion of who caused and who fixed Israel’s hyperinflation before:
“Economically, its policies were equally disastrous. The command-and-control structure it imposed on Israel’s economy created inefficiency, corruption, and bloated bureaucracy. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, the country had been rocked by two bouts of massive inflation, culminating in a near-total economic collapse. At its worst, inflation reached over 400 percent annually. The shekel was worthless. The average Israeli couldn’t keep up with prices that changed weekly, sometimes daily.
It took a dramatic shift away from the leftist economic model — led ironically by coalitions the Left hated — to save the economy. “
Fantastic. My thoughts exactly. Thank for for saving me the time of having to write that!! (And you did a much better job than i would have!)
Joshus, i agree with some points that you're trying to make. But you are conflating everyone to the left of netanyahu: the treacherous diaspora leftist Jews and the radical antizionist scum like pappe, with people like lapid and nadav eyal, brothers in arms, hostages family forum, and many, many others in the center left who are not socialists, are fueling the economy of Israel (hi tech) and are very, very Zionist.
Finally someone whom thinks like I do! Thank you Nicky.
It's easier in hindsight but if before Oct 7 Israel had tried to reoccupy the Gaza Strip, there would have been terrible international pressures against it.
I can understand leaving Gaza in 2005 in order to divide the Palestinian leadership and make negotiations about two states, all the rage then (remember Colin Powell, US Secretary of State). But a sensible strategy in 2005 went off course 15 years later.
Nobody forced that idiot to solicit Qatar and allow the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars, right? Nobody forced him to open the border to the day workers who spied for Hamas either. The IDF and Shin Beit many times suggested aggressive action against both Hamas and Hezbollah and he was scared of initiating anything. For his weakness and strong desire to rip the country apart over “reforms” Hamas and Hezbollah felt especially bold. Enough, the man’s pathetic weakness invited war. Same goes for Obama and Biden’s pathetic weakness inviting the belligerence of Iran and its proxies, but hilariously the man most critical of those fools is himself spineless.
Sending Qatari money in was agreed-upon across the political spectrum.
Bennet was the one who increased the number of workers entering into Gaza.
Netanyahu's extreme caution needs to be balanced against the extreme criticism he received and receives from all sides. Consider: "he didn't go to war because he was too spineless", but "he did go to war because he's making political hay"; sometimes from the very same people.
Michael Oren described it in 2014:
"The antagonism sparked by Netanyahu, I gradually noticed, resembled that traditionally triggered by the Jews. We were always the ultimate Other—communists in the view of the capitalists and capitalists in communist eyes, nationalists for the cosmopolitans and, for jingoists, the International Jew. So, too, was Netanyahu declaimed as “reckless” by White House sources and incapable of decision making by many Israelis. He was branded intransigent by The New York Times, yet Haaretz faulted him for never taking a stand. Washington insiders assailed him for being out of touch with America, and the Tel Aviv branja—the intellectual elite—snubbed him for being too American. The Israeli right lambasted him for spinelessness, the left for intractability, the Ultra-Orthodox for heresy, and the secular for pandering to rabbis. All agreed in labeling Netanyahu disingenuous, imperious, and paralyzed by paranoia—qualities not uncommon among politicians."
Ah, he’s “like other politicians”, so everyone should be resign for October 7 (Halevi, Bar) EXCEPT Netanyahu. He’s such a spineless politician, and that’s so “to be expected”, that we also can’t expect him to take responsibility when he was the leader for the majority of time leading up to October 7. Fascinating logic, truly.
No, only those whose continued stay in power impedes the war effort more than anyone who might replace them.
Thankfully, there are people other than Halevi and Bar that can take their place and do a better job, not least in implementing government policy.
There is currently nobody else who can muster up enough public support to finish the war, whatever you think of Netanyahu's handling of it.
(FWIW unless he manages to topple the Iranian regime, make peace with Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, annex Judea and Samaria and Gaza and get Palestinians to voluntarily emigrate, I don't think he has a political future in Israel.)
Once the war is over, Israel needs to have a facts-based conversation about how it got to Oct. 7th (e.g. no wild accusations about Qatari money). And no, Israel won't get useful results from a state commission of inquiry run by the judiciary that will completely ignore the judiciary's role in drastically reducing the effectiveness of the IDF over the years. There needs to be an investigative mechanism that has broad powers, and broad support from across the political spectrum, with a focus less on finger-pointing and more on actionable policies that need to change.
That's true: the initial strategy of splitting Palestinian leadership was good but keeping it under control failed.
Despite his image, Netanyahu has always been very cautious and that failed in Gaza. The cost of keeping Gaza quiet was paid by Qatar money, guest workers and, eventually, by a strong Hamas on the border.
Judicial reform is a separate topic as is the public reaction to it and the way the govt tried to ram it through. If the US Supreme Court had anywhere near the powers of the Israeli one, there would be riots in the US. Our Constitution carefully delimited the powers of each branch of government. Here is an article written 18 years ago by Richard Posner, a well known expert in Constitutional Law, on the need for judicial reform in Israel
https://newrepublic.com/article/60919/enlightened-despot
Sorry, the word “constitution” is exactly the one to consider. The US has one, Israel does not. The US had three coequal branches of government balancing each other, Israel has barely two, and with this “reform” Israel would have one branch of government and no constitution- basically turning into Turkey or Egypt. You get the point?
Right now the Supreme Court are forcing the government to finally recruit the Haredi on the basis of equality before the law. It is illegal to force secular Jews to serve and pay taxes, while Haredi do not, and effectively each of their families costs $35K/year to the taxpayer. Without a constitution and with full government control of the courts, suddenly such laws become totally “legal” and “reasonable”.
Are you willing for the US to become a single branch of government with no constitution? I am sure aren’t.
With this reform Israel would turn into the UK or Canada, where parliament has complete power. Parliamentary systems are ripe for abuse and we've seen that happen recently in both UK and Canada, as VP Vance pointed out in his Munich speech.
That's why the ideal would be to adopt a version of the US Constitution in Israel, including its Bill of Rights.
A long time ago I was active with the “constitution for Israel” movement. It only partially did the job because politicians don’t like change once they figured out how to game the system. The UK has the equivalent of a piecemeal constitution. Our own in the US is based on Magna Carta and others.
Before a constitution, Israel should become a single branch of government, with a government that has proven it wants to force laws that take away basic civil rights as well as allow unequal treatment before the law (laws that only apply to secular Jews but not Haredi ones).
Thank you Arrr Bee for this return to balance and reality. While I'm generally a fan of Joshua's essays, I found this one to be deeply–and dangerously–one sided, ignoring as it did the fact that Likud and Netanyahu have been dominant for the great majority of the period since 2009.
It is possible, and in this case necessary, to hold two thoughts simultaneously--first, that Hamas is evil and bears 100% of the responsibility for Oct 7 and its sequelae, and second, that the Netanyahu government's strategy, decisions and failures contributed to Hamas' ability to perpetrate the atrocities of Oct 7, to the deaths of more hostages than absolutely necessary, and to a strategic vacuum regarding what happens after the war.
When even knowledgeable commentators choose to indulge in self-righteous dudgeon, and elide past facts that are inconvenient to their arguments, the more the risk of division and self-destruction.
The judicial reform was the right idea. The problems with the judiciary date back to one of Menachem Begin's "foundational principles for governance" which was a concept called the "Supremacy of the Law".
It's based on a certain world view I have heard from other Jews from time to time in which they believe that it all boils down to the law. I.e., Criminal governments break the law by violating citizens rights. An all powerful judiciary would invalidate any attempts to do so.
"the Supremacy of Law,’ which is to say, establishing civil liberties as a ‘Basic Law’ or ‘Supreme Law’, and granting authority to a panel of judges to invalidate a law which contradicts the Basic Law by contradicting civil liberties."
Arre Bee, you can see in today's polarized and politicized social climate how difficult it would be to have an unbiased judiciary in the ICC etc, and that was precisely the problem in Israel, from long before Oct 7.
The judiciary was full of leftist ideologues, and it was more of a problem than a solution or a safe guard of civil liberties in times of extreme political polarization such as nowadays.
Sorry, in a shitty parliamentary system like Israel (where MPs don't get elected locally, but instead allocated down from the party based on portion of the 120 seat Knesset) there's already a unitary executive and legislative. In lieu of a constitution, there's exactly one check on the executive+legislative unified branch. It is unreasonable to expect a reform that gives a party with 51% of the vote complete unchecked power over all three branches of government. Pass a constitution first, then people will support things like a judicial reform.
My point is the utter stupidity of returning in the middle of a FUCKING EXISTENTIAL WAR to a judicial reform that barely half the country support, which before the war had a year of constant demonstrations that involved a massive part of the country. Before people lecture the center left about how it's allegedly unpatriotic, I want to understand why a government of a slim majority needs to overhaul everything, just to give the Haredi a pass on military service. This is really what it's about - the governing coalition being pissy that the supreme court struck down an infinite deferment for Haredi men on the basis of equality before the law. So you want Israel to have no constitution, a slim majority owning all branches of government unchecked, and also laws passed that tax and force longer conscription on the secular majority and national orthodox, while the Haredi get a pass from serving, working, paying taxes (forget that, they get $35K/year per family on average in welfare).
That's why I thought Naftali Bennett was a great PM: he found areas of common interest in the parties and built a government on that.
As he said recently "to receive you have to give". That, in a nutshell, is the reform needed for Haredim.
He also betrayed the same voter base who entrusted him with their representation.
The reform needed for Haredim is for Israel to stop trying to impose a secular Zionism on Haredim and the Jewish people. Haredim can integrate perfectly well into a society which sees itself as Judaic - defined by Judaism; Zionism, for all its benefits, is not that.
The State of Israel was founded by and on and through Zionism. It is arguably the only ever successful political movement the Jewish people have ever had.
So the leadership of the Haredim should get off their high horse and prepare for some reciprocity.
11 out of 12 of the first yishuvim were founded by Haredim. Nothing would have happened here if not for the blood, sweat and tears poured into the arid ground decades before Zionism was conceived.
We don't really know what might have happened post World War 1, if the British Mandate would have been established opposite the old yishuv instead of the Jewish Agency. But the early Zionists made that impossible, by "diverting" (stealing) funds earmarked for the old yishuv during and after the war, making themselves the sole representatives of the entire Jewish people, sidelining the old yishuv with every tool at their disposal up to and including political assassination, and denying visas to religious Jews during the period before the Holocaust to create a secular hegemony.
When Weizman tried to push educational reforms on the old yishuv and was sharply rebuffed, he claimed in retaliation to have found 300 prostitutes in the old yishuv. That demonization has continued up to today, hoping against hope that maybe the Haredim will give up and become secular. (Much like Palestinians hoping the Jews will go back to Brooklyn.)
So when Haredim say the army is systemically anti-Judaism and therefore they cannot participate in a universal military draft, perhaps people should get off their high horse, focus on facts, and ask - perhaps it's time for the IDF to be a Jewish army, focused on winning; instead of an engine for promoting feminism, climate change and other progressive values in society? Maybe if the IDF did so, we might not have gotten Oct. 7th?
The best way for Israel to stop imposing Zionism on the Haredim is to stop them from accepting benefits from any secular Zionist state.
That will sort them out in no time.
Which "benefits"? The right to vote? To own property? Fair trial?
Would you leave Haredi diabetics and cancer patients to die in the streets for lack of nationalized healthcare?
Will you force them to pay for an ineffective educational system they neither want or need, as well as paying for the education of their children out of pocket?
Are the Haredi handicapped to be forced into the workplace because 80% of women and 50% of men working isn't enough, and you're holding out for universal employment?
But in order to be consistent, you have to excuse Haredim from all taxes - 18% VAT, 50% automobile taxes, high property taxes. Are you willing to do so?
So you want to deny kollel subsidies, because you see no value in full-time Torah learning. That's a reasonable position, to deny low-income families whose head-of-household is engaged in full time Torah study, the monthly 1000 NIS that might make the difference between milk on the table or none. It'll definitely make a dent in Israel's 500 billion dollar budget. Will it force those Haredim engaged in full time Torah study to leave? Probably not; they'll do their best to make every shekel stretch, as do Haredim in general - Haredi households statistically live within their means, more so than in the general population.
So we need to understand: where does this shrill narrative of Haredim as useless layabout parasites come from? Is it factual and rational? Or is it emotional and fear-driven?
The purpose of democracy is to determine a consensus on proper policy; checks and balances, and a constitution, are only mechanisms in figuring that consensus out.
Thus when you have a consensus from the representatives chosen by the people that there should be no humanitarian aid to Gaza, and the IDF should hold the territory it has cleansed of terrorists; and the military echelon and judiciary collude in preventing those policies from happening; both judicial reform and shaking up of the military echelon are vitally necessary, precisely because Israel is in an existential war, a war could have been over in January of last year.
And so, when Haredim refuse to serve because they claim - and the national Orthodox agree - that the army is systemically anti-Judaism, and erodes Jewish belief and practice in most of its religious soldiers; there's a national consensus behind them. Or at least, a national consensus that Haredi political support is more important to successfully continue and end the war, than forcing a universal Haredi draft whose recruits will only first see service (hopefully) long after the war is over.
You are implicitly arguing that Haredim don't count because they place Judaism before the state and therefore refuse a universal draft; and because 80% of women and more than 50% of men working isn't enough, as you're holding out for universal employment before the Haredim count in democratic Israel.
But the judicial reform had a democratic consensus, composed of multiple parties, yet you dismiss such consensus because it doesn't line up with your views. How many others in your "democratic" Israel will you say simply shouldn't count for one reason or another?
Let's focus please on the systemic failure of the army to focus on winning, the centralization and regulation that drive up prices and taxes, and the imposition by judicial fiat of political positions unsupported by virtually all Israelis.
"checks and balances, and a constitution, are only mechanisms in figuring that consensus out"
Wrong: checks and balances and the constitution are to provide a balance between rule of the majority and individual rights. Otherwise a majority could erase the rights of any individual and call that democratic; it would be the rule of the mob.
That is the genius behind the US Constitution:it provides a Bill of Rights that applies to everyone (because of the 14th Amendment) and grants individual rights that the majority might not like but has to live with (like the right to drive through Bnei-Brak on Shabbat). It also prevents any one branch of government from becoming dominant.
"the IDF should hold the territory it has cleansed of terrorists" Feel free to put on a uniform, grab a rifle and go help out. Otherwise don't presume to tell the IDF what to do if you're not going to share the risk.
The Putney Debates after the English Civil War were the first modern discussions of how democracy should work. Participants were torn between allowing foreigners to vote, or requiring some wealth to vote, or requiring military service to vote. One citizen - one vote was one of many options.
For Israel, the ideal might be one citizen - one vote; one soldier - one vote; thus one citizen-soldier - two votes.
"checks and balances and the constitution are to provide a balance between rule of the majority and individual rights"
That's true of the US constitution, for which personal liberty is self-evidently a blessing ("and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity"). The US constitution reflects the foundational values of American society.
In contrast, the UAE constitution https://www.uaelegislation.gov.ae/en/constitution says quite clearly "Islam is the official religion of the UAE. The Islamic Shari'a is a main source of legislation in the UAE." because - like it or not - Islam is a foundational value of the societies of the UAE. Are you arguing that the UAE constitution isn't one?
And so, the only definition of "constitution" that covers both is "a document that lays out how the government is supposed to carry out those fundamental values."
Checks and balances falls under the same heading: because individual liberties are so foundational to American society, each branch is prevented from overstepping its authority, and thus potentially violating individual freedoms.
(BTW, why do you think it's an inherent right to drive through Beni Brak on Shabbat? Is it also an inherent right to be able to drive through a residential neighborhood at four in the morning with speakers blasting and open windows?)
"Feel free to put on a uniform, grab a rifle and go help out. Otherwise don't presume to tell the IDF what to do if you're not going to share the risk."
It would indeed be presumptuous of me to criticize the IDF this way. But I'm only echoing the criticisms of people who have put their lives on the line and are intimately familiar with the IDF and its strategies, such as Amir Avivi, Yair Ansbacher and Einat Wilf.
I'm also arguing that the underlying source of these failings, and the army's inability to include Haredim, is the same.
But why is it that all the supporters of the judicial reform who did serve, just barely managed to move the needle in the slightest. How does that square with your ideal of a citizen-soldier getting an extra vote?
You seem to think all Constitutions are created equal, US and UAE.
Nothing is further from the truth: the US Constitution is a work of genius, consciously informed by writers from the Enlightenment, especially Locke and Montesquieu, who developed the ideas of limited government and separation of powers. The very idea that such a work of genius could have been reproduced more than once, and by a mere desert kingdom at that, is preposterous. The use by Macron of Article 43 in the French Constitution to pass his pension law without approval from the National Assembly shows that even developed countries failed to match America's Founding Fathers. Recent restrictions on free speech in the UK are yet another example.
(Indeed, I am proud to be an American Exceptionalist and Israel could do no better that adopt, with minimal changes, the US Constitution for itself.)
A quick check on Tel Aviv beaches and nightclubs during holidays will show the preferences of a large segment of the population. Using a road normally on Shabbat is not the same as using a road abnormally to make noise.
Whatever the failings of the IDF, they were failings of those who tried, who risked their lives yet might have done better. Those who did not try at all have no right to judge, as Theodore Roosevelt said in his famous speech "The Man in the Arena"
https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/Learn-About-TR/TR-Encyclopedia/Culture-and-Society/Man-in-the-Arena.aspx
Two votes for citizen-soldiers does not mean they would all agree on the same thing. It means that those who risk their lives have greater say in the direction of the country than those who do not. Two votes for each of them only guarantees that they dominate national decision making, as they should.
So you're saying we need to be led by a Kahanist?
That’s the exact opposite of what I wrote.
How is the judicial reform "undemocratic"?
When you have no constitution, and a 51% majority holding automatically both legislative and executive branches, if it also controls the judiciary you get a sham democracy like Turkey and Egypt.
What if a majority consensus of people want it that way? Is that then "undemocratic"?
Do you know how democracy works? Does a majority override basic rights? Does it get to conscript 2/3rds of the country to three years of military service and absolve 1/3 of it?
Does a majority get to take your right to vote away?
Does it get to violate freedom of worship, by insisting Jews participate in institutions that indoctrinate against Judaism?
The problem is everybody has different ideas of what those basic rights might be, and - more importantly - which rights take precedence?
Organizing a Nazi protest in Germany gets you fines and imprisonment of up to five years. In the US, you can get police protection. Why? There's a conflict here between two rights: freedom of expression, and protection from hate speech. Germany (in no small part due to its history) has prioritized protection from hate speech; the US prioritizes freedom of expression.
And yes, the only thing that stands in the way of the majority denying certain people the right to vote, is the self-interest of the pluralism of the majority. In other words, the only thing preventing the majority - composed of blonds, brown-haired and black-haired - from deciding redheads shouldn't vote, is the realization that if the redheads come into power they may decide one of the other groups shouldn't be allowed to vote. But that is an extraordinarily powerful incentive.
Checks and balances, and a constitution, are only mechanisms for pushing such a denial of voting rights further away; they don't make it impossible.
You speak as if there isn’t already a Haredi combat battalion. But there is, נצח יהודה
Following that template the army is prepared to recruit more Haredi youth.
It’s not complicated - a democracy has both rights and obligations. They can serve in Haredi only units or they can leave the country to whichever other country suits their way of life. They do not get or obligate the majority of Israel to fund them with an average of $35K/year of welfare per family as well as serve exceedingly longer periods to defend the country while the Haredi do not.
Equal protection before the law means that all citizens carry an even burden. Their freedom of expression is not constrained. If they believe that they get to both get massive welfare and protection and not serve, they can move to the US or elsewhere were the get less welfare and need to work and don’t need to serve.
Would you like to test if there is a majority consensus to allow driving and eating cheeseburgers on Shabbat?
We have no need to test, at least WRT Shabbat. A majority of Knesset members are personally Shabbat-observant; it is unlikely in the extreme that those who recognize the importance of Shabbat in their personal lives would accept it being violated on the national level.
More, nobody is denying anyone in Israel the ability to eat as many cheeseburgers as they like, whether in a car on Shabbat, or outside it. But we're talking about the public sphere being a Jewish one, for both ideological and practical reasons.
I imagine there are people interested in displaying a Nazi flag, even in Israel. Nobody would deny them the right to do so in the privacy of their own home; but in the public sphere it's a different story.
I largely agree with you. One can understand the diaspora Jews like Thomas Friedman continuing their delusions. They pay no price for doing so. The Israeli left is almost suicidal. One thing though. The strategic weakness that Israel has projected since Oslo has been the policy of Netanyahu since the beginning of his second term. He cannot be exempt from complicity.
Ugh. Friedman and his urbane op-eds. Jino…
Sadly, history has shown that there will always be Jews who embrace the Left, regardless of facts and circumstances. We can only hope that they remain in the minority and don’t do too much damage to the majority (in Israel at least) who recognize reality.
This is definitely how it looks from afar.
"The Israeli Left had no idea how to govern in the treacherous Middle East."
Appeasement never works. Western democratic nations fail every time when they attempt to negotiate with barbarians.
The Left today, in Israel and in the US, has little in common with the Left of 50 years ago. US Democrats wouldn't choose a JFK today and Meretz wouldn't choose a Shimon Peres either.
Vivian Silvers end on October 7th should be a warning to all of them.
https://substack.com/redirect/77b0962d-0a0a-40de-887b-e629e365bb5a?j=eyJ1IjoiMjg0Y2xlIn0.3qrA9GoBxeiTcAv1Lq4g8z6yDYJmjW-NurGNLHa_EdQ
That was heartbreaking.
You’re a piece of garbage.
Why? It’s like trying to fix a marriage by yourself if you are married to a spousal abuser. You can’t fix a marriage by yourself. You can’t make peace by yourself. The Gazans who worked ‘alongside’ the peaceniks of the Gaza envelope kibbutz literally gave to Hamas all the information about the kibbutz in order to better slaughter the people.
They literally did not do that.
Of course they did. They even took down names of all the people who attended a peace event with them. The Gazan photographer who was exhibited as part of a "peace" display took notes and sent them back.
The Gazan workers didn’t spy on their workplaces in Israel? I call bullshit on this.
I’m a survivor and I choose to keep on living and winning. The hatred and fear of leftists like you doesn’t concern me one bit. I’ve been called worse by better.
Your contempt for Vivian and Ofed and Naama and the entirety of Jewish history is an example of how much you have lost. You are no winner. And having looked at your profile, I suspect you are more troll than Jew. So fuck off. Caritas Cupid…
Contempt for Jewish history? As determined by you of course! No, I don't conflate marxism and Judaism. Silvers loss is lost on you, but its expected. Often the ones who need to hear something critically important are the least likely to listen. Like you, miss 2 subscriber big shot Tamara.
I'm not sure where you see "contempt" there. Or what you're arguing with factually.
And now a troll who claims to believe in Jesus yet spews antisemitic language and pretending to be a leftie convert from. This entire substack need sot be retired.
I agree!
That’s so true! The far left Israelis and Jews will be the first victims of Hamas and Islamic militants, and will not have my support or sympathy
Let me be clear: I am not Jewish nor do I practice any organized religion. I consider myself agnostic. But I am very clear on who is evil and who is good! I also don’t give a shit who you are or how you were raised. I do know you are a coward that hides behind a keyboard under Americas safety. I suspect you are another useful idiot that carries a “Queers for Palestine” poster. As a US Marine I’ve have killed better “men” than you, and they were Islamic Terrorists. But unlike you they were brave enough to fight for what they believed in. Take your cowardice and self hating Jewish past and shove it up your Muslim loving pussy ass. I hope that someday your unless existence will be brutally ended by a filthy goat fucking Islam worshiping cavemen. And fuck your calls for racism. I openly admit to hating Gazans and I proudly do so not based on any religious beliefs, but rather my hatred for pure evil! Are we clear!!!
Hey Ed, you consider yourself a writer but only have 1 single person following you…you are the very definition of a LOSER!
Nope I am not interested in your religion or opinions. Get back to your Queers for Palestine rally and good luck with your sex change