Religion is No Excuse to Shirk Army Duty

Jewish faith, used by some to justify cultural and social isolation, can also be a force for cohesion and patriotism, for both men and women. Hannukah is as good a time as any to examine this notion. According to an opinion piece in the Jerusalem Post:

Under pressure from Shas and United Torah Judaism, the government has backtracked on its support for a bill that would have helped fight the worrying trend of draft-dodging among young women.

Currently, a young woman can avoid two years of IDF service by simply making a declaration before a representative of the Chief Rabbinate that her religious convictions forbid her to perform military service. Unfortunately, many secular young women take advantage of this. If it had been ratified, the bill would have forced young women seeking exemption to give proof they led a religious lifestyle. But haredi MKs claimed the bill breached the religious status quo protected in the government coalition agreement. MK Miri Regev (Likud), one of the drafters of the bill, abstained in deference to the coalition, though Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilna’i broke ranks and voted in favor.

Sadly, the government’s myopic readiness to cater to the whims of narrow religious extremism has led it to ignore the broader national interest of encouraging universal conscription. Just last week, the head of the IDF’s personnel division, Maj.-Gen. Avi Zamir, said that by 2020 some 60 percent of eligible 18-year-olds would try to dodge military service. Half already do. Zamir voiced concern that Israel’s “people’s army” ethos was in danger.

Haredi men are to blame for the bulk of the decline.

But deception on the part of young women has a part to play as well. Thirty-five percent of young women eligible for the draft seek exemption for religious reasons, but thousands lie, according to the IDF human resources department. Via Facebook, the IDF recently managed to catch about 1,000 young women who updated profiles on Shabbat, or posted photos of themselves eating in non-kosher restaurants or wearing immodest clothing.

In the past, the IDF has even hired private investigators.

These efforts underline the IDF’s need for man- and woman-power, even if it means forcibly recruiting liars.


Paradoxically, while religion has been touted as an excuse for exemption from military service, it has also served as a major motivational force, especially among religious Zionist youths. Impressive, though unsurprising, figures were published in the August edition of the IDF magazine Ma’arachot showing a sharp rise in the number of religious combat officers and members of elite units in the IDF in the past decade.

Less known, though, is a growing trend among religious women to enlist in the army.

The vast majority of religious Zionist rabbis oppose military service for women, fearing that intimate contact with the opposite sex in a sexually permissive environment will lead to a breakdown of taboos.

But attitudes are changing. Religious Zionists, who have a greater tendency not to demonstrate blind loyalty to their rabbinic leadership, are responding to the IDF’s more accommodating approach to religious sensitivities – related, undoubtedly, to the sharp rise in kippa wearing officers and commanders and a general atmosphere of multiculturalism.

One thousand religious women interested in military service attended a conference last week in Tel Aviv, compared to just 400 last year. In parallel, an organization called Aluma was established in recent years to prepare religious young women for military service and interface with the IDF during service. Numerous educational frameworks exist for women, including Midreshet Lindenbaum and Tzahali, a women-only religious pre-military academy.

And many young women actually see constructive military service as a boon to faith. A survey of 98 religious women, published in January and conducted by researchers from Sha’anan Teachers College in Haifa, found that IDF service actually strengthened their religiosity.

A third of women who served as IDF teachers felt they had become more religious thanks to their military service, compared to just a quarter of women who served as teachers within the framework of national service.

And 95% said they studied Torah during their IDF stint, compared to just 72% in national service.

Jewish faith, used by some to justify cultural and social isolation, can also be a force for cohesion and patriotism, for both men and women. This is a decidedly positive development which should be encouraged. At the same time, the right of the sincere religious female to opt for national service instead of IDF service should also be respected.

But dodging service to the country altogether is simply unacceptable. Religion is no excuse.

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Ultra-Orthodox vigilantes patrol Jerusalem

Considering oneself "holier than thou" is not an acceptable excuse for striking out. And somehow, worrying incidents linked to extremist fundamentalist views invariably hit out against women. There's a common thread of common brutality that ties together patriarchal monotheistic cultures. Lately, the most conservative ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem have begun to dispatch self-appointed modesty patrols which, in action, are not too different from those despicable goons armed with whips who circulated Kabul for the Taliban's ministry for propagation of virtue and suppression of vice. The AFP interviewed the anonymous witness, who still is cowering from these so-called religious men:

Shaking as she recalled her brutal beating at the hands of Jewish ultra-Orthodox vigilantes, a 28-year-old Jerusalem woman who would only identify herself as M. said she feared for her life.

Some residents say the self-styled "modesty squads" are spreading terror among those seen as straying from the strict moral code demanded of the ultra-Orthodox in the more conservative neighbourhoods of the Holy City.

There life revolves largely around the study of holy texts and a strict dress code that has men sporting black coats and wide-brimmed hats and women covering their heads, arms and legs.

Two weeks ago police arrested two alleged members of a modesty patrol accused of brutally beating M.

The gang allegedly gagged her, hit her, kicked her and said she would be killed if she did not move out of the ultra-Orthodox Maalot Dafna neighbourhood.

"They beat me up, tied me up and threatened to kill me," M. said, holding back her tears. "Who will prevent them from killing me?"

Neighbours had complained of what they called the divorcee's "indecent" lifestyle, which in such neighbourhoods can mean anything from wearing trousers to meeting men in private.

"I don't know why I was treated this way. What has my life got to do with those guys," said M., who until three years ago was married to a Haredi -- a term used to describe the most theologically conservative form of Judaism.

Police have also detained a man accused of torching a store in an ultra-Orthodox district that sold what some residents considered "immoral" clothing.

In Mea Shearim, a Haredi bastion where streets are sealed off for the Jewish day of rest and satellite dishes are considered a sign of heresy, an electronics store has become the latest target of the morality squads.

A young man, sporting the distinctive Haredi sidecurls, beard, black garb and hat, stood outside the store handing out pamphlets.

He said the store was threatening the morals of the community by selling MP4 players that would allow buyers to view indecent movies in their homes.

"This shop corrupts the neighbourhood youth," the man said. "We will fight until they stop selling these impure devices."

David, a salesman at the store, said he is an Orthodox Jew but believes that the protesters who have picketed outside for weeks "are spreading terror in the neighbourhood".

"They burned down our stocks, nothing will stop them," he said, declining to give his family name for fear of being singled out for attack.

In June, a 14-year-old Mea Sharim resident was taken to hospital with burns after an attacker hurled acid at her.

Israeli media said that at the time of the attack the girl had been wearing loose-fitting trousers and a short-sleeved shirt, enough to provoke the ire of religious fanatics.

In 2006, a 50-year-old American-Israeli woman was viciously attacked by four men because she refused to go to the back of a bus while on holiday in Jerusalem. The bus was not one of the sex-segregated lines Jerusalem runs to accommodate Haredi preferences.

In addition to violence within the Haredi community, Israel has also seen tensions between religious and secular Jews over the course of its 60-year history.

The ultra-Orthodox have led violent protests against swimming pools, cinemas and other establishments they consider immoral for failing to segregate the sexes or sacrilegious for opening on the Sabbath.

Meny Schwartz, who heads the religious Kol Haredi radio station, said the modesty patrols have been around for years, with the full approval of religious leaders, but appear to have become increasingly violent.

"For some weeks we've been seeing excesses," he said.

Essential carry-on left behind: a 3 yr old girl!!

Oops. Tel Aviv airport staff are great at preventing dodgy items aboard the plane, but a little girl passenger got left behind, the AP reports.

Israeli airport police say a local couple embarked on an unlikely European vacation, remembering their duty-free shopping and their 18 suitcases but forgetting their three-year-old daughter at the airport.

The couple and their five children were late for their flight to Paris yesterday and made a dash to the gate. In the confusion, their daughter got lost. A policeman found her wandering around the terminal, crying for her mother.

Israeli media Monday reported that the ultra-Orthodox Jewish parents, whose names were not released, didn't notice the child was missing until they were told in the air that she had been found at Ben-Gurion airport. The child, accompanied by a member of airline staff, took the next flight to Paris where she was safely reunited with her parents.

Haredi hat-snatching gangs in Bnei Brak

Hang onto your hats, fellows. This is not conflict as we Israelis usually know it... it might have been inspired by a Dr Seuss plot. But maybe we can use the same strategy for peace settlements elsewhere, since the Road Map has folded and the Annapolis agreement is a non-starter. Buki Naeh, of Yediot Aharonot, lifts the lid on the furious fur hat snatching reportedly going on in Bnei Brak, a densely-packed ultra-orthodox city east of Tel Aviv.
(Where is PETA to sort them out??)

Rival gangs in the Viznits Hasidic community in Bnei Brak won't steal shekels or waste their breath in ideological arguments, Buki tells us. Instead, these Hasidic quarrelers swipe each others shtreimels and barter for their return.

First some background: The shtreimel is a fur hat worn by many married haredi Jewish men belonging to one of the various Hasidic sects on Sabbath and holidays. The hat, like those once worn by Polish and Russian nobles, requires up to 30 skins-- preferably sable, mink, or fox. A Hasidic man buys one or two expensive shterimels throughout his life for a price range of $2,000 to $5,000. Fake fur shtreimels are available, especially inside Israel, but are frowned upon by traditionalists. Usually the bride's father purchases the shtreimel for a groom to wear at his wedding. Nowadays, it is customary to buy two shtreimels—a cheaper version (sells for $800-1,500), called the regn shtraml (rain shtreimel) is used for occasions where the expensive one may get damaged. But economy-minded family men often prefer shower caps or plastic bags to protect regn shtreimels on sodden Saturdays. Most of these hats are made in New York City, Montreal or Israel.

The shtreimel is worn without fastening, a significant factor in the latest street fights in the Viznits neighborhood. Those looking to humiliate a Hasid snatch his shterimel, forcing him to return home with a lowered head sporting only his yarmulke.

In recent weeks, the brawls between the camps have intensified, with both sides snatching each other’s shtreimels. During the peacemaking, each camp returns the other’s goods stolen in the latest strife.

The barters, one of which took place two weeks ago, also include returning torn shterimels that were intentionally spoiled and torn in the heat of battle in exchange for ones in mint condition.

In each fight, the Viznits Hassids try to snatch as many shterimels off their opponents’ heads, so as to have as many bargaining chips as possible ahead of the next barter.

An entire book can be written about the background leading to these street fights in the Viznits community. When Hasidic leader Rabbi Yehoshua Moshe Hagar fell ill, a world war was ignited between his sons – the elder Yisrael and the younger Menachem Mendel – on who will succeed him.

Mendel vs. Yisrael

Viznits Hasidism is divided between the “Yisraelists” following Rabbi Yisrael and “Mendelists” supporting Rabbi Menachem Mendel. The walls in Kiryat Viznits are filled with defamatory posters. Rabbi Yisrael controls the synagogue and the community institutions while Rabbi Mendel reigns over the neighborhood.

Until about six weeks ago, the status quo between the two camps had the Mendelists come to pray at the central synagogue of “Torat Chaim” only on Fridays. They would stand on their seats during the tish (a Hasidic gathering of Hasidim around their Rabbi) held by the ailing Rabbi.

But then the visiting Mendelists’ seats were broken down, and the Yisraelists prevented their entrance to the synagogue. In response, the Menedlists tried to stand on the Yisraelists’ seats, waging war once again.

The recent street fights – mainly during weekends – included more than 100 participants hitting each other and trying to grab the shterimels. One brawl follows another, sending dozens of people to hospital.

The police claim they are doing their best to calm the atmosphere, but they are ill at hand, as each camp complains the police is siding with its opponent. Legal counseling has recently been applied to the case, when Attorney Moshe Meroz was approached by some Mendelists. Meroz immediately sent a letter to the Tel Aviv Police, asking them to handle the pogroms issued by the Yisarelists against the Mendalists.

In his urgent letter, Meroz claims that the Mendelists’ complaints about the pogroms are not being handled by the police. He further says that hundreds of Yisraelists attacked Rabbi Mendel and his followers, beating them mercilessly – completely overlooked by the police.

Meroz ends his letter by saying that some 20 shterimels have yet to be returned to the Mendelists, and that real danger is at hand due to the police’s continued disregard of the matter.

The police responded by saying they were well aware of the strife and is handling the case without siding with either camp. The police also claim they have arrested Hasidim from both camps after the last fight.