TW3, That Was The Week That Was, The Best Israeli Version; IDF and the Chareidim

In less than two minutes, Latma's Hebrew's Word 12.4  brilliantly summarizes the past week's news. 



The writers bring up some excellent points.

• This week's theme is no matter how hard the Israeli media tried, they couldn't find good pictures of chareidim goofing off, ignoring the sirens on Holocaust Memorial Day.  The result was that the people most active during the sirens and who the least understand the significance of the day were the media. 

This anti-chareidi theme is related to the fact that Likud's Binyamin Netanyahu's latest/newest coalition must find a solution on how to draft chareidim into the IDF Israel Defense Forces without totally alienating the chareidim who have been locked out  of the government coalition as part of the demands of the Yesh Atid-Bayit Yehudi aka Lapid-Bennett block.

The Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home) Party, which is the former Mafdal, NRP, National Religious Party, which had been dying a slow death until Naftali Bennett  took it over and gave it a total facelift.  One aspect of his campaign was to stress his elite fighting army service.  Actually, showing MK wannabes' IDF records was one of the two main campaign points of many parties. The other was to campaign as saviors and protectors of the elderly.  About that, I still haven't seen an increase in my state old age payments from Bituach Le'umi, National Insurance.  I'd love more money each month. It would come in very handy.

Israeli politicians and media are claiming that the unfair disproportionate burden of army service and milu'im, reserve duty is because of the chareidi exemptions, although it's actually growing faster from the secular Left, the youth too self-centered and non-patriotic to serve in the army.

It's always easier to blame the very/extreme religious aka the chareidim.  Don't get me wrong. I do think that they should serve, as should the secular Left, but this is a slow process for the better of the army and Israeli society in general.  Soldiers must be well motivated.  No doubt a large part of the Gilad Schalit fiasco is due to the fact he didn't have the mental toughness to be on the frontlines.  His father ran the campaign to get him released as if it was all the fault of Israel and Israel should pay any price no matter what the ultimate cost to security would be.

We must remember that today's Israel Defense Force isn't a peacetime army.  We are surrounded by enemy countries and international NGO's and anarchists who aim to destroy us.  Even the countries like the United States that claim to be our allies promote policies that totally endanger us.

There is absolutely no way that we can make peace with the Arabs who want us off the map and into the sea.

The Israeli War for Independence is till being fought, and we must win!