DON'T THEY CARE ABOUT THE DANGER THEIR COUNTRY FACES?

YnetNews reports that the Haredi parties like United Torah Judaism are threatening to join/support the left:

Shas may be offering Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a bear hug, but the other haredi parties are very unhappy with the Likud-Beiteinu alliance and are threatening to shift their support to the Left.

Both Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox newspapers, Hamodia and Yated Ne'eman, who represent the spectrum of United Torah Judaism, ran a nearly identical editorial this weekend, explicitly saying that the haredi party may join forces to form their own bloc in the next coalitional negotiations.

Both papers accused Netanyahu of hubris: "Netanyahu and his partners are guilty of hubris… (and) if they keep being so dismissive of their partner, the Likud-Beiteinu may find themselves facing blocs they have never seen before, when they come to form their coalition," Hamodia's editorial said. [...]

A united haredi bloc, the paper warned, "Could, for instance, strike a deal with Livni and Yachimovich and crown them prime ministers by rotation. There's nothing wrong with that."

Yated Ne'eman's editorial was nearly identical, saying that "Everything can change because the Likud is guilty of the sin of hubris."

The paper speculated about the possibility of a haredi-Left government, saying that "Such a coalition will not hurt us because it needs us… The level of incitement (against haredim) will also subside – as it always does when the Left-Center rules.

So not only are they resorting to victimology again, they're implying that only when a left-wing government is incumbent, everything's fine...for them. Although it does hint at how most negative leanings towards Haredim by the left only have what to do with how they'd back a right wing government, and the leftist politicians aren't really bothered by their own demands for accommodations and ridiculous gender separation. Despite what's said at the beginning, Shas isn't and hasn't supported the right at all times, nor have they been very respectable of it either. And they aren't very supportive of wider requests that they share the burdens of responsibility in this country either, as their opposition to military service has shown.

Also, note the irony of how the Haredi parties may not be particularly bothered about supporting a woman for prime minister if she's willing to back their demands. That's hypocrisy in motion alright.

The Haredi parties are a disgrace if they're willing to betray their own country for personal gain. This is exactly why they deserve to sit in an opposition instead of a coalition.

Update: and while we're on the subject of Shas and military, look at what rabbi Ovadia Yosef's just said lately:

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, said that in order to prevent Haredi yeshiva students from being forced into military or national service, they may have no choice but to leave the country.

“God forbid, we will be compelled to leave the land of Israel…in order to free the yeshiva students” from being drafted, Yosef said during a sermon last week.

Yosef added that “we are surrounded by haters… by enemies… by evildoers who despise the Torah.” He blasted Israeli politicians who call for the drafting of ultra-Orthodox young men. ”When will [our yeshiva students] be great scholars if they are drafted into the military?”

Boy, what a dishonorable man Yosef is. How do they expect there to be a safe environment for anyone to study Torah if nobody guards the country from enemies like the Islamofascists? Including Iran? If they really do take this seriously and emigrate, it will not only send a strong signal of disloyalty to their own country, it will also suggest Yosef is trying to encourage his own variation on the Satmar.

Saying that adherents of the Torah are “in grave danger,” Yosef said that in the upcoming Israeli elections, slated for January 22, voters must “open [their] heart[s] and vote for the ultra-Orthodox parties” in order to prevent the enlistment of yeshiva students.

The rabbi further warned of the consequences awaiting anyone who voted for a nonreligious party.

“On Judgment Day, God will accuse them, saying, ‘You abandoned my Torah in the hands of the evildoers… who hate the Torah,” he said.

I guess that means that if I'm the kind of person who doesn't wear a kippa most of the time, I'm filthy too, right? What's almost hilarious here is how he won't even distinguish between right and left here, and a secular rightist must not be any different to him than a secular leftist, no matter how respectable a rightist is to religious customs in contrast with a leftist. Message to Yosef: I'm not the most religiously observant person around and I LOVE the Torah. That's why I support Zionism, and it shocks me how some Haredi communities - especially Satmar and Neturei Karta - have rejected that part of the Torah (and come to think of it, pretty much everything else). And that Yosef would imply that it's literally forbidden to vote for another party no matter how good their platform is contemptuous in the extreme.

Fortunately, however:

Not all ultra-Orthodox Israelis agree with Yosef’s stance against equal service for all citizens. On Sunday, dozens of ultra-Orthodox arrived at the headquarters of the National Service Administration in Jerusalem to enlist in the national service corps.

According to a Government Press Office statement, over 2,000 ultra-Orthodox men currently serve in the civil service corps, and of the men who have served to date, some 85 percent were afterward successfully integrated in the workforce.

And the army has special learning classes in their bases, even for Torah studies. Maybe Yosef should consider that the army can make a better man out of its employees, even when it comes to Torah studies.