I've had some letters published in the Jerusalem Post this
year, but some -- unaccountably -- were not, so I figure I'll post them, along
with anything else I written in the vain hope of publication:
(A few of the ones to the Post were in fact
published.)
6/6/10, NYT
To the Editor:
Your editorials, and those of columnists such as Nicholas
Kristof, have not only laid the blame for the recent Gaza-flotilla events on
Israel, but have opposed its blockade of Gaza in general. I wonder:
Do you believe that unfettered shipping to Gaza would not include
munitions, which would promptly be used against Israel? What will be your reaction when a
more-accurate missile hits a kindergarten in Sderot or Ashkelon? “Oops”?
And if you’re thinking of international inspection, well, I can’t
guarantee that it won’t work, but Hezbollah’s rearming under the nose of the UN
forces that are tasked with its prevention should make one uncomfortable with
such a suggestion. No, the blockade is,
unfortunately, justified. And as for the
recent killings? When a gang of men
start beating someone with pipes they quickly lose my sympathy, as they should
yours.
6/11/10, NYT
To the Editor:
Tony Judt makes the strange assertion that the
Palestinians engage in terrorism (which, to his credit, he recognizes as
morally indefensible) because, as the much-weaker party in negotiations with
Israel, they can bring no other pressure to bear. But historically
terrorism has had quite the opposite effect on Israel, causing a hardening of
public opinion against concessions and reinforcing its suspicion that people
for whom anything goes can’t be trusted to honor agreements. Israel’s
most generous offers have come at times of relative quiet. All of which
should lead one to question Palestinians’ inability to secure an agreement, and
to wonder at their attachment to murdering civilians.
6/12/10, JPost
To the Editor,
While it’s reasonable to point out the absurdity of any gays
making common cause with Hamas, the argument that the Spanish gays’ rejection
of Israel’s delegation is wrong because of how “progressive” Israel is toward
gays is likewise wrong. If we were the monsters they claim we are –
wantonly oppressing Palestinians, indiscriminately killing civilians, flouting
international law and standards of conduct – then they would be right to
reject our delegation, no matter where we stand on homosexuality.
No, the only sensible reason for them to accept us is that
we really are the Good Guys; that the blockade of Gaza is, if not a
perfect, then certainly a reasonable and legitimate reaction to the behavior of
Gaza’s citizens and government; that the attempts to run the blockade are
anything but “humanitarian” and that the events of the Mavi Marmara reflect
the morality of the Israeli position and the immorality of the flotilla’s.
That’s not to say that the Spaniards will accept such an
argument, only that it’s the only argument they should accept.
6/6/11, NYT
To the Editor:
It’s refreshing to read David Brooks as he skewers the
traditional attitude towards dealing with Assad, but he misses a larger point,
and in so doing makes a similar mistake. The basis for the realpolitik of
treating the world’s Assads as if they are legitimate statesmen is that it will
ultimately do more good than harm. Brooks is equally convinced that it
will do more harm than good (“their efforts were doomed”).
In fact – and this really should be obvious to anyone
familiar with the concept of Time – neither side can do more than guess; and
given the complexity of the world and our limited nature, the guesses are
rarely any good. Our challenge is to make the best decisions we can given
our imperfect knowledge of the past and present, and our complete ignorance of
the future. I’ve always been against propping dictators up (even Brooks’
“normal” ones), because supporting their misdeeds could only be excused, if at
all, by an impossible level of certainty about the outcome. The fact of
the Arab Spring vindicates my position, not because I knew it would happen, but
because our puffed-up statesmen and diplomats didn’t know that it wouldn’t.
8/9/11, JPost
In A new deal for Israel? (8/4) Uri Savir
writes: “A house in Ariel costs approximately 40 percent of what the
same house in Netanya would cost. On top of that, almost NIS 100,000 of mortgage
benefit goes to the house owner in Ariel, Karnei Shomron, etc.”
Is he suggesting that the government is making up the
100,000 shekel shortfall? That seems wildly improbably. The claim
about the price difference is dubious in the first place, but since Savir can
toss these things off without feeling the need to support them, I guess my only
recourse is to ignore them. I would like to think, though, that the ‘Post
has some kind of editorial review process that would raise such questions.
When it comes to more nebulous claims, like his statement
that our upholding of humanitarian values has been compromised by “the
occupation” (my quotes), I can’t really expect you to question whether the
position is logically tenable. Where would it end? Bet when he says
that “15.36% of the investment in public housing goes to the settlers,” another
startling and suspect claim, wouldn’t it be worth your while to say that you’d
like to see some support, or do you not care if it’s one of the 47% of
statistics that are just made up on the spot?
Peace Now, for instance, is known for some very creative
accounting when toting up how much “the Settlements” are costing the
country. I think that’s a story in itself; in fact, a story that your
paper might want to report. But by the same token you should avoid
publishing just any claim that any well-known individual cares to make.
9/14/11, JPost
R. Yosef Blau writes persuasively about the mis-education of
many Religious-Zionist youth. He focuses on their being taught a simplistic
(and inaccurate) view of our place in the world, our conflict with the Arabs
and the religious value of our territorial patrimony.
I think he is quite correct, but I also think that the
problem is, in a way, deeper: It’s not simply that we have given up on
teaching nuance, tolerance and a deeper understanding of our sources. We
have given up on teaching, period. Our community, along with the
surrounding culture, has adopted the idea that teaching children to know things
and do things – what we once called Education – is neither possible nor
necessary. Not possible, because we have lost our ability to maintain
discipline. Not necessary, because the really important work is in
socializing and engaging the children – knowledge can come later, but if we
don’t get their emotional commitment now, we never will.
Religious Zionists are sometimes even more extreme in this
view than members of other communities, out of concern that their children will
either give up religious observance or join the Haredim.
The result is not only widespread ignorance, but a
puffing-up of the kids’ sense that their opinions are as valuable as anyone’s
and they need no consultation before ditching school to “defend” an outpost,
commune with Nature or deface a mosque.
The most telling remark in R. Blau’s piece is that “the
message communicated is that demonstrating is more important than
learning”. It’s true, but it should be seen in context: In today’s
education almost anything is more important than learning.
The corrective is not simply to improve teaching – how
effective can that be when the whole activity is devalued? It’s to get
our educators (and parents) back to doing their jobs, which do not include
heart-to-heart talks, rap sessions, watching movies, going to demonstrations or
attending strings of airy “symposia”. They are addicted to “informal”
education, and like all recovering addicts they should avoid their poison
completely, lest they slide back.
10/6/11, NYT
To the Editor:
If I take penicillin to treat my pneumonia, but only half
the recommended dosage or only for three days, not only will I probably not be
cured, I will have helped to foster antibiotic-resistant strains of the
bacteria. By Jenna Jordan’s logic
(Op-ed,
October 4th), this means that penicillin isn’t a sufficient treatment for
pneumonia. In fact, it would be unwise to take it unless one were
prepared to supplement that treatment with, let’s say, a macrobiotic diet.
10/8/11, NYT
To the Editor:
Your editorials on Israel, the most recent being Nicholas
Kristof’s, invariably depend on what “every negotiator knows” about “the
framework of a peace agreement”. Setting aside the fact that there are
negotiators, diplomats and academics who disagree, in a world where everyone
who was anyoneknew that the Soviet Union was here to stay and knew that
the Arab dictatorships were, at least, stable, shouldn’t you be considering
that these negotiators may be, y’know, wrong? It’s not as if they’ve
got some history of correctly predicting what happens in the Middle East.
How many of them said that Israel leaving Lebanon would end in Hezbollah
attacks, or that leaving Gaza would end with a Hamas takeover and constant
rocket fire?
This doesn’t prove them wrong, mind you. I’m
sure they can explain how some unforeseen factor (an Israeli blunder, perhaps?)
skewed the results. Still, it certainly fails to prove them right.
11/24/11, NYT
To the Editor:
The respondents to Sarah Schulman’s
essay have all missed her point, which is that a good
record of human rights in one area doesn’t somehow offset a bad record in
another. I have always been against pro-Israeli boosters who tout our
democratic values, medical contributions, Nobel prizewinners or foreign aid to
refute claims that we are oppressing the Palestinians. What’s the connection?
No, were we actually oppressing the Palestinians none of
that would make up for it. Fortunately, we are not oppressing
them (though I realize this will not resonate with much of your readership).
Professor Schulman’s essay fails on the facts and on the interpretation
of the facts, rather than the moral logic. Her respondents mostly agreed
with her description of the situation but faulted her morality, and so were
wrong on both counts.
12/10/11, JPost
Daniel Gordis’ diatribe is both uncharacteristically whiney
(“Bumper stickers, after all, are so much more appealing than thinking.”
“What are we going to cheer instead? Moderation? Thought?”) and
uncharacteristically ill-conceived. Whatever he may think of “not one
inch” as a policy, he should contrast it with one under which Israelis will not “continue
to die, year after year, endlessly”. It may be a stupid policy.
There’s room to say it isn’t a policy at all. But instead of attacking it
on its demerits, he chooses guilt-by-association with Michelle Bachmann and
American armchair Zionists, and derides them all for the temerity of thinking
they know better than “all of Israel’s leaders”. Is that an
argument? Is there some axiom that asserts that at least one of Israel’s
leaders at any given moment must be right? Has Gordis himself never
argued a position for which he found no support among our leaders? If
not, he belongs to a very exclusive club.
He then turns to the legislative initiatives about the
Supreme Court. There are many who have given calm, reasoned explanations
for these laws, and precedents from other Western democracies. Whether
they’re right or wrong, none of them rely on the times being “dire”, and the
fact that they “horrify” this or that group isn’t exactly relevant to the kind
of elevated public discussion that Gordis claims to seek. Also, the fact
that the Court is “well-functioning”, even if granted, has no bearing; none of
the proposals is meant to make it more efficient, but rather more
representative.
I wouldn’t have expected Gordis to describe our democracy as
“fragile”, and I suspect that in another context – one where he’s not desperate
to drive home these bombastic points – he would say the opposite. That’s
just my suspicion, mind you, but what I find even harder to credit is that he
actually shares the opinion, recently expressed by ex-president Clinton, that
writes off much of our electorate. He’s been too consistently reasonable
in the past for me to believe that he thinks our democracy is fragile because
the wrong people have the vote. Maybe he had a deadline and was fighting
off the flu. I don’t know, but I prefer to give those who disagree with
me the benefit of the doubt.
10/3/12, JPost
Unfortunately, my search for the nuance in Daneil
Gordis' Dose of Nuance has once-again come up empty.
To promote nuance in our public discourse regarding Israel
and the upcoming US elections, one would certainly have to at least raise some
of the following questions:
- Is injecting Israel into the presidential race
morally wrong, imprudent, neither or both? Why?
- Should Netanyahu refrain from publicly promoting
Israeli positions with which President Obama disagrees? If not, how
can he prevent their being used by the Republicans?
- What authority can and should Netanyahu exercise over
public statements made by members of his government – whether Danon,
Lieberman or Barak?
- Are the complaints about Netanyahu’s interference in
the election overwhelmingly partisan? If so, is there anything he
could do short of keeping silent on vital national issues (see question 1)
that would generate positive comments from the
complainers?
Rather than deal with any of the above, Gordis contents
himself with snarky comments like “Netanyahu is probably too busy preparing for
his next appearance in a thinly-disguised Romney video…” That may secure
his bona fides with certain groups of intellectuals, but it does
nothing for the reader.
12/16/12, JPost
Reading that line in Daniel Gordis’ piece (Not just France
with humous, Opinion, 14-12-12) I was reminded of a conversation I had
years ago with an American relative. He told me confidently that George
Bush would go down in history as America’s worst president to-date. I
asked him why and, this being before the invasion of Iraq, he cited
Bush’s opposition to stem-cell research and gay marriage. Now my relative
is well-versed in politics and American History, which he teaches in
high-school, but the fact that Warren G. Harding was possibly inducted into the
KKK while in office and James Buchanan essentially presided over the descent
into Civil War, that other presidents may have been blunderers or tools of
vested interests or reprehensible in their personal lives – obviously none of
this can compare with the depravity and destructiveness of opposing stem-cell
research and gay marriage!
It should be clear to the reader that the stated reason
cannot possibly have been the actual reason. As to the actual reason, my
assumption – with all due respect to my relative – is that one simply could not
exist in his social milieu and not hate Bush. It had nothing to do with
politics, much less with policy; it was about whether one could view oneself,
and be viewed by one’s peers, as an enlightened, moral individual or be lumped
with the ignorant, the reactionary and the bigoted.
Gordis’ dismissal of Bibi because he [stuck] his thumb
in Obama’s eye with the E1 announcement and failed to keep pressing [the
Palestinians] to come to the table so a few scattered souls around the world
would see that we’re not the obstructionists… is, if anything, even less
compelling than the anti-Bush arguments.
So, as with my relative back then, I’m left to assume that
Gordis can’t consider Netanyahu for Prime Minister because of the damage to his
self-image and position in his social and professional circles. Which of
course tells me nothing at all about the candidates and much more than I care
to know about Gordis.
2/27/13, JPost
There’s an episode of West Wing in which President
Bartlet humiliates a religious-conservative talk-show host at a Talk-Radio
gathering. He does so by asking her for various personal advice in light
of biblical laws of ritual purity, bride-prices and so forth, highlighting how
ridiculous they sound. She had no rejoinder, but hey – if the leader of
the free world heaped scorn on me in front of all my colleagues I’d probably be
flustered too.
Still, his tirade begged a very simple response: “Mr.
President, you’re right: Those laws are stupid. But, as a religious
man yourself you believe that many statements in the Bible are of ultimate
truth and importance. Please tell us which ones are right and which are
wrong. In fact, we can cut out the middleman and just have you tell us
directly what it is that God wants.”
So when Daniel Gordis praises the newfound “pluralism” in
Moshe Feiglin’s willingness to shake a woman’s hand but has only contempt for
the religious school that suspended a girl for singing in public, he’s
essentially saying that pluralism – “A form of society in which minority groups
maintain their independent cultural traditions” – is wonderful… as long as the
cultural traditions are good ones.
3/25/13, JPost
I like to believe that Jonathan Rosenblum’s heart is in the
right place; that he is fundamentally and unselfishly interested in doing good;
that his essays spring from that interest. Still, his latest addition to
the corpus of Haredi apologia strikes me as both disingenuous and
misleading.
He inveighs against the moral failing of feeling superior to
one’s neighbor, and then immediately mentions how secular Israeli society
suffers from youth violence while Haredi society is immune.
While on the subject he finds space to defend Haredim against the
accusation of blind obedience to their rabbis.
But the main thrust of the essay is a plea for tolerance and
letting go of anger. Given the timing and the reference to his sons – who
study in yeshiva rather than serve in the army, but whom he admonishes to learn
dedication and self-sacrifice from our soldiers – I can only assume that he’s
encouraging non-Haredi Israelis to give up their anger at Haredim for
not sharing the various national burdens.
It’s hard to argue in favor of anger towards our neighbors,
our family. There’s a prayer, Tfilat Zacah, that we say just
at the onset of Yom Kippur. In it, knowing that the coming day, even
with our genuine repentance, will not absolve us of sins we have committed
against our neighbors, we tell God that we don’t want anyone punished on our
account and forgo any claims we have against others. This is very-much in
the spirit of Rosenblum’s homily.
But there’s an exception: We explicitly reserve the
right to demand that which we are legally owed and can enforce in court.
Bringing that point to our context, one can give up one’s anger but steadfastly
demand that Rosenblum’s sons, and their whole cohort, get up from their studies
and report for duty. One can demand that Haredim contribute
their fair share to the GDP and to government revenues (note: It may be
that they do – I don’t have the facts before me – but I strongly suspect
otherwise). One can demand that their political parties aspire to govern,
not merely trade votes for the narrowest of sectarian interests. And in
general, one can demand that Haredim, as a group, participate equally with
their compatriots in their mutual quests for national independence, for
physical and financial security and for the betterment of society.
And one can demand that the terms of this participation
be set, like everyone else’s, by our elected representatives, rather than
by the Haredim themselves.
5/28/13, JPost
For a fairly brief essay, Donniel Hartman’s Letter to
President Abbas provides quite a number of statements with which I could
take issue, but picking at its rhetorical scabs is trite and tiresome, and
frankly: I’m after bigger fish. Here’s what I’d like to know:
1.
Hartman pleads with
Abbas: Don’t prove the naysayers right. Can we assume, then,
that if Abbas answers in the negative the naysayers will indeed have been proven
right? That may sound facetious, but in fact it’s a symptom of a serious
underlying problem. Let’s come at it from a slightly different angle.
2.
What exactly would Abbas
have to do to make Hartman say that trying to make peace with him is
counterproductive? Does such an act exist? Because if not, if the
proposition that Abbas wants to make peace cannot be falsified by observation,
then it moves from the realm of logical discourse to that of faith. Is
that what Hartman believes, the Abbas’ bona fides are axiomatic?
3.
We don’t have 30 more
years… Kerry has opened up a … short-term window of opportunity.
Somebody should ask “When was the last time the window for peace in the Middle
East wasn’t closing?” That, too, could seem like caviling, but
someone should certainly ask “What does it look like when the window
is closed? Could it be reopened, and if so, what meaning is there to its
closing?” In fact, doesn’t the statement that Kerry has opened up a
window imply that it had previously been closed?
4.
And finally, where are the
journalists taking people to task for vapid and self-serving public
statements. Why was “How many ‘acts of genocide’ does it take to make a
genocide?” a one-time occurrence, when public figures daily say things that are
contradictory, meaningless, misleading or insupportable?
Even when interviewing people that they don’t like,
our journalists are more likely to sneer and make snide comments than to ask
penetrating questions, leaving the reader frustrated and – more importantly –
the citizenry uninformed.
6/7/13, JPost
In “Eternity Envy”, Jonathan Rosenblum takes us through a
progression from average religious Americans through Evangelicals to our
forefathers at Sinai and their unquestioning acceptance of the commandments to
Rava’s passionate dedication to learning, ending with today’s Haredim.
Although there was no attempt to imply a logical progression, the overall flow
fits well with the general Haredi fear of seeming under-zealous.
“If kashrus supervision is good, isn’t more supervision
even better? If modesty is good and covering-up is modest, isn’t
covering-up more even better? If separating the sexes is good,
isn’t more separation better? And if learning Torah is the best
thing, how can one ever excuse doing anything else?”
It’s hard to refute the logic, but when they get to five
different supervisions on an oven-cleaner, “Taliban” women dressed like walking
tents, and His-and-Hers sidewalks, even Haredim are apt to take stock.
And it may occur to people that even if spinach were, pound-for-pound, the
healthiest food you can eat (I have no idea, it just came to mind because of
Popeye), that doesn’t mean that it’s healthy to eat only spinach.
And this is where Rosenblum’s implicit conclusion is
unwarranted. Extolling the virtues of passionate Torah learning doesn’t
show, ipso facto, that it trumps all other activities all the
time. It’s possible that physically defending one’s people will sometimes
take precedence. To be clear: I’m not stating that it does, though
I believe that. I’m satisfied to point out that Rosenblum hasn’t
demonstrated that it doesn’t. Nor am I saying that we’ve struck the
proper balance with Hesder, or that absent our being surrounded by
vicious enemies it would still be good for yeshiva boys to take a couple of
years off to serve. These are difficult issues, and I think they share a
Heisenberg-like property that the more specific one gets in proposing a
solution, the less confidence one should have in it.
But the fact is, Rosenblum’s failure to mount a rigorous
defense of the Haredi position on serving in the army (or in national service,
for that matter) is beside the point. What really gets to the rest of the
country’s citizens is this idea the Haredim have that they get to decide
whether to serve or not. For all the talk about loving their fellow Jews
and defending us all with their learning, they make it clear that they’re
very-much them, and not us. They vote in the most
sectarian fashion possible, and their representatives make no pretense of
trying to run a country. My impression is that when in conflict with
their surroundings they either retreat or bully, not compromise. For all
Rosenblum’s vaunted respect for those who do military service, I
doubt that his shul says the prayer for them on Shabbos – and
if by chance it does, it’s not typical of the Haredi shuls I’ve
attended or heard of. Some Haredim have spoken openly of “secession”, and
even if they haven’t been taken seriously, the underlying mindset seems to
typify their community.
That, I believe, is the fundamental issue, of which army
service is but one application.
6/11/13, JPost (A Reply to Gideon Sylvester)
Gideon,
One typical definition of cheesy is “hackneyed and
obviously sentimental”, so your connection to “Blessed are the cheese-makers”
is not so far off after all.
It’s one thing to extol the efforts of Berry and McGee, and
of the Bereaved Parents’ Forum. Mercy and self-abnegation are qualities
that, whether or not they are always appropriate, belong in
everyone’s spiritual repertoire.
But there are other qualities equally important, if less
photogenic: Thoughtfulness and truthfulness, for instance.
Conflating Israel’s being under attack with Israel’s being responsible for
its being under attack is neither thoughtful nor truthful. Rather, one
has to be willfully obtuse to entertain such an idea. (Either that or one
of those EST people from the 70’s who would tell you to take responsibility if
a safe fell on your head, but you’re too young for that.) And just to be
perfectly clear, when you write of “idealists who envision a perfect Jewish
state at peace with its neighbors”, you imply that our lack of peace is due to
our lack of idealism – otherwise you were just throwing words together at
random.
Another tendentious apposition of terms is “Making peace is
tough, and taking risks is frightening,” which implies that we lack
sufficient backbone to make peace, that we need the determination to overcome
our fear. This ignores the fact that fear engendered by risk is there for
a reason, and that “overcoming” it may be a very, very bad idea.
Thousands of people were murdered in the wake of Oslo. Did granting
weapons, safe haven and legitimacy to terrorists cause that? Would worse
have happened otherwise? Impossible to know. But it’s certainly
reasonable to assume that the “risks” we took at Oslo ended up going against
us. Risks often do that – that’s why they’re called risks. You
seem to ignore the very real possibility of terrible consequences if we follow
the path you encourage.
Likewise, meeting with The Other isn’t always beneficial –
it depends who The Other is. Sometimes you end up like the social
worker in 1,000 Clowns: “I didn't like Raymond Ledbetter, so I tried
to understand him, and now that I understand him, I hate him!”
You’ve got some ideas that may be worth examining, but
you’ve got to look at them, and at everything around them, clearly.
7/15/13, NYT
To the editor,
Like most essays on this topic, your editorial missed the
essential question. It isn’t whether a top executive can affect the
company’s bottom-line by millions in either direction; it’s whether the
Compensation Committee has the slightest chance of knowing that about him in
advance.
And not only would they have to know that, but they’d
have to know (with a fair degree of certainty, considering how much of other
people’s money is riding on it) that the 10-million-dollar executive will
benefit the company more than a 1-million-dollar executive (by a substantial
amount of money or with a substantially higher probability), and in fact more
than ten 1-million-dollar executives, 100 middle-managers or 200-300 line
workers.
If, with a modicum of life-experience, you’re entertaining
that idea, you’ve already lost.
7/30/13, JPost
To the Editor,
A few weeks ago I had dinner with an old friend.
Driving him back to his home in Har Nof, a Haredi neighborhood in Jerusalem, I
was warned to be careful of the pedestrians, who make no distinction between
the sidewalks and the street. My friend wondered aloud about what caused
this phenomenon and I proposed a theory: It demonstrates their dismissal
of any rules but their own.
This came back to me on Friday when I read Jonathan
Rosenblum’s paean to Abraham Lincoln. While I share his reverence for
Lincoln’s humility, his forbearance and his fair-mindedness, I couldn’t shake
the thought that the piece had to be seen in the context of Rosenblum’s
campaign to prevent, or at least ameliorate, the Haredi draft. I may be
reaching, but I saw this as his way of encouraging the political victors to be
magnanimous.
Which brings me back to the jaywalkers, and to a point that
I haven’t heard anyone make in the debate over drafting Haredim; a point that I
think is central. Despite the terminology of “equalizing the burden” on
one side and “destroying our lifestyle” on the other, the real debate has been
over whether the Haredim are part of this country or not. Rosenblum has
argued that the Army neither needs nor wants the Haredim, that Haredim
contribute heavily to Israeli society in many ways and that, left to their own
devices, many of them would enlist anyway. All of which misses the point
that the rest of the nation doesn’t recognize the right of the Haredim to
decide whether, when and how they will serve. Lincoln was willing to put
up with almost anything from the South, including an indefinite prolongation of
slavery, but he cast the country into war and sacrificed hundreds of thousands
of lives rather than accede to the South’s claim that they were not subject to
the Union.
Most of us have not thought of the Haredi issue in these
terms, at least not consciously, but it peeks out here-and-there; take for
instance the suggestion made in some Haredi circles that they actually go so
far as to formally secede from the State of Israel, and of course there is the
wall-to-wall agreement that their young men will all go to jail rather than
serve. Aside from the purely legal issues, the refusal of most, if not
all, Haredi synagogues to say the prayer for the welfare of our soldiers is
infamous, despite Rosenblum’s protestations of respect for their
self-sacrifice; and when the country’s security is threatened, there’s always
film of Ben Gurion Airport thronged with Haredi yeshiva boys skipping town.
Obviously, this is a problem, but it’s a different problem
from the one we’ve all been talking about. It’s not about the Army, it’s
not about service or sharing burdens, nor yet about the importance of learning
Torah. It’s about whether we’re all citizens of the same country. I
have no program in mind, but one should always begin by establishing the
reality of a situation, and I think a big part of that reality is this
secessionary mindset. We need to inculcate the feeling of fellowship, of
shared fate, shared rules and – to the extent possible – shared vision.
The correct mix of carrots, sticks, self-effacement and sternness is beyond my
capacity, but if I’m right, this may get better people thinking about it.
