Letter from Jerusalem: Haredim Are Better Off Joining A Left Wing Government

As absurd as this may sound, the ultra-Orthodox community is paying a price for joining Netanyahu's rightist government.

Haredim aren't rightist
Ultra-Orthodox often better off joining leftist governments
Menachem Geshaid • Ynet

As absurd as this may sound, the ultra-Orthodox community is paying a price for daring to join rightist governments, especially if these are led by Benjamin Netanyahu. The anti-haredi wave that had been sweeping through Israel in recent weeks is part of the overall animosity towards the Netanyahu government, which haredi parties are full partners in.

As a whole, the haredi public is not rightist and features a great diversity of opinion. It includes rightist groups, very large groups that are part of the centrist camp, and groups holding views that are more leftist than Kadima's positions.

The Orthodox community never took part in rightist rallies and never viewed itself as part of Israel's rightist camp. The haredim mostly keep their views to themselves. For the most part, haredi papers also refrain from taking an unequivocal stance. This is true in respect to Shas, and certainly in respect to United Torah Judaism.

In recent years, only because of the sobering up in the face of diplomatic processes, it appears that the haredi community had shifted to the right. However, this is not the case. The Orthodox community may be more realistic and more skeptical, yet it is not rightist by definition.

The haredi community does not view the Greater Israel as the start of our salvation process and does not rush to the Judea and Samaria hills.

For the sake of those who forgot it, we shall note that Shas was part of the government at the time of the Oslo Accords, and that United Torah Judaism was in Sharon's government during the Gaza disengagement (although it voted against the plan.)

Generally speaking, haredi party representatives barely address political-diplomatic issues. In order to maintain the status quo, the haredi community joins any government it feels welcome in. In most cases, the haredim are a convenient partner.

Keep future in mind 
However, while the haredim are not bothered when they are part of leftist or centrist governments, because diplomatic progress is worth the partnership at almost any price, joining a rightist government subjects the Orthodox community to incitement and character assassination.

It happened not too long ago that Tzipi Livni – who currently seeks to join forces with Netanyahu to curb haredi extortion – sought to form a government. Emissaries on her behalf arrived at the homes of United Torah Judaism representatives bearing pledges that are more substantial than the ones offered by Netanyahu.

The only demand made of Livni was to refrain from holding talks on Jerusalem at this time. Everything was fair game, yet given the current security situation, where we are being fired at from any territory we give up, there should be no negotiations on east Jerusalem. Yet Livni refused to declare this publically.

There is no doubt that should Livni win the next elections, it will ask United Torah Judaism, and possibly Shas, to join the government. She will certainly prefer them over a government with Likud, for example – especially if Netanyahu will demand a rotation, as she did before.

Yet now, Livni is attempting to ride the anti-haredi wave in a bid to score political points. However, she would do well to take the future into consideration as well – not only vis-à-vis the Palestinians or Israeli Arabs; also vis-à-vis the haredim.

I would say haredim are paying a price for years of mass welfare fraud and draft dodging, along with senseless and increasingly frequent riots and other crimes. But maybe that's just me.

Comments

[Garnel Ironheart]

A prostitute is not a rightist or a leftist. She goes with whoever pays her money.

So it is with the Chareidi political parties.

[david]

Not absurd at all. Most Chareidim and their leaders aren't interested in the nationalism of the Israeli Right, nor in the corrupted version of Torah that the "national religious" right-wing has concocted to justify its politics.

[nobody]

"The only demand made of Livni was to refrain from holding talks on Jerusalem at this time. Everything was fair game, yet given the current security situation, where we are being fired at from any territory we give up, there should be no negotiations on east Jerusalem. Yet Livni refused to declare this publically."

Thus the national treason of haredi parties is revealed. They are just like the secular zionist leftists (bibi included). They will compromise ANYTHING as long as the people won't revolt against them. They felt that attacks on Jerusalem and/or talks on east Jerusalem would result in true feelings of betrayal amongst their otherwise indifferent obedient public. Otherwise, if the people will not revolt against their authority, anything is fair game. No red lines, no principles, no values. Just like the naturei karta, just like the secular establishment. The whole system is rotten to the core.

[david]

Nobody, it's typical how you twist the fact that the Chareidi parties don't share your extreme nationalist views into the accusation that they are unprincipled etc etc. They may be unprincipled, but not for this.

This is just the way you and your ilk twist the Torah to suit your extreme nationalist views. Suddenly holding onto every inch of Eretz Yisroel is one of the things for which a Jew should sacrifice his life along with not committing murder, bowing to idols etc, יהרג ואל יעבור. (Conveniently forgotten when even more impractical to apply, such as in the parts of Lebanon that are part of Eretz Yisroel). Suddenly Jews can go onto the Temple Mount, even though every non-extreme-nationalist rabbinical authority has forbidden it, Chareidi and Zionist alike.

When the Chareidi parties, on the grounds that they had no strong opposition to it in principle and if it meant they wouldn't lose funding for Torah study, decided not to prevent the Gaza Disengagement, how your kind shrieked and squealed. Like something out of a horror movie. How you cannot stand it when frum Jews (and frummer than you noch) don't support your toxic concoction of right-wing political extremism and messianic revisions of Torah. And how you screech at the secular Israelis who conceived the State, who campaigned for it, whose blood and sweat built it and fought for it without your help. You say "The whole system is rotten to the core." - you and your sick occupation, draining the goodness of the nation, threatening violence and civil war, calling those who disagree with you traitors, murdering a Prime Minister, spitting on the soldiers who defend your dirty settlements.

And you claim principles? What are your principles? That you can twist and distort Torah to suit your political purpose as it suits you, all the while claiming the mantle of religion?

Please God you and your kind will be stopped, because you will ruin us all.

[nobody]

"Nobody, it's typical how you twist the fact that the Chareidi parties don't share your extreme nationalist views into the accusation that they are unprincipled etc etc. They may be unprincipled, but not for this."

Judaism doesn't value Jerusalem, Ihr HaKodesh? Astonishing. Judaism does not value settling the land of Israel? Wow! You'll have to erase much of the Mishne Torah, Shulhan Aruch, and other halachic works, but man you have some wild ideas!

[nobody]

Your comment reflects your warped mind and unbounded blind hatred. What exactly do you mean by "stopped?" Do you mean "my kind" should be wiped out and exterminated? And when you clarify this, will your comment be allowed to remain on this site?

You make many assumptions about me as an individual that have no basis. You also paint an entire group of people under the notion "extreme" and then invent things about them too.

I'm not going to address your ridiculous accusations in general, but on one point I can't resist since it is so farfetched. I never changed the halacha about what a person gives up his life for - the three cardinal sins. However, you should note that war by definition is a risk of life. So why do we fight when enemies attack if we can't risk lives other than for 3 cardinal sins? Get real. You are living in a dreamworld. No one hands over their homeland and expels their own people. You don't see the PLO expelling its arab adherents for the sake of signing pieces of paper. They only demand that we expel ours.

I have no problem with secular Jews who founded the state of Israel. You made that up. I DO have a problem with the secular-and-religious-alike Jews who brought in the terrorist thugs from Tunis and armed them and funded them while they blew up buses full of our people. (I say "our" assuming you are Jewish). That is not a very difficult concept to grasp and you don't have to lash out at your "untermenshcen" because I happen to state this openly, what most people feel deep down.

[david]

More deliberate lies and distortions.

1. You claim I said Judaism doesn't value Jerusalem. I never said that.

2. Since when does saying "your kind" and hoping you will be stopped mean that I think you should be "wiped out and exterminated?" You are COMPLETELY NUTS.

3. What you state about the the halacha re. pikuach nefesh mirrors the position of the Chareidi parties in most respects (which is that this is a decision best left to those who know what they are talking about on the matter. ie the IDF). The difference is that you think you know better, and then have the nerve to make that into some sort of religious imperative rather than a disagreement on the strategic or military facts.

I hope your kind are stopped.

[nobody]

You are conflating religion with common sense. To not give up parts of one's homeland to an enemy who openly calls for our people's destruction and who openly declares that ALL of our homeland belongs to them - this is common sense, not religious piety! You are getting very defensive over my critique as if I am writing down some kind of innovative manifesto of Judaic belief. I am pointing the finger not just at corrupt secular politicians, not just at haredi rabbis, at ANYONE who gives away our homeland and strengthens our genocidal enemies. It's a very obvious treachery.

You speak about security experts deciding on issues of warfare. Interesting. It was NOT the IDF that decided to import the terrorists from Tunis and fund them and arm them while they blew us up! It was not "security expersts" who decided this. And "security" was the least of the concerns involved or else the idea would have been adjusted once shown incorrect by proof of bombs. They still stick with the same idea. It's not about security. Time to wake up.

[nobody]

You complain about the Jerusalem issue. Fine, let's be more specific and see if your complaint was warranted.

Are you saying that Judaism values Jerusalem, or half of Jerusalem, as someone ELSE'S capital city? And what of "rabbis" and politicians and so-called Jewish leaders who promote the falsehood that we are not permitted to keep our capital or build in certain areas of it that Arabs lay claim to?

Not everything is a pilpul or a complicated drasha. Let us please use common sense. There has been a general agreement to cede half the capital to the enemy. They implement this by impeding building not only for Jews in Arab neighborhoods of E. Jerusalem (Yes, some Jews move there and live there!), but also in Ramat Shlomo now, which has nothing even to do with Arabs. While they implement these fact-on-the-ground generating measures, they shout from the rooftops that "Jerusalem will not be sold out" and "Jerusalem is ours forever." They deceive the public. Is this not a crime?

[david]

"I am pointing the finger not just at corrupt secular politicians, not just at haredi rabbis, at ANYONE who gives away our homeland ...It's a very obvious treachery."

And you are a nasty extreme right wing POS!! You people who accuse others of being traitors make me want to puke. Why don't you take a trip back to Nazi Germany in the late 30's. You'd make a great brownshirt.

[nobody]

So once again you resort to namecalling. Unless I am willing to commit national suicide, I'm a brownshirt. Wow, you have so much to say!