Insular Haredi society is becoming a national security crisis

So here's a writer who's talking about how the Haredis, in their own way, are taking attention away from more pressing issues like Islamofascism by imposing their belief systems on other Israelis, as they pave the road to hell with "good intentions":

The Oct. 7 war turned a simmering political dispute into a national crisis.

Hundreds of thousands of Israelis answered the call to reserve duty. More than 900 lost their lives. Families endured repeated deployments while businesses struggled without employees, and parents went months without seeing their children.

At precisely the moment when the country needed every able-bodied citizen, thousands of Haredi men continued to avoid military service.

The Israel Defense Forces has repeatedly warned of severe manpower shortages, and Israel’s courts have ordered the government to enforce the draft of Haredim. Successive governments, however, have refused to apply the law. Given the reaction to the 16 arrests this year, it’s hard to imagine any government arresting thousands of Haredi draft dodgers; those arrests triggered violent demonstrations that blocked highways, shut down rail traffic, attacked detention facilities and assaulted police officers, including one whose son was killed in Gaza, and even targeted the home of a Supreme Court justice.

Instead of enforcing existing law, the Netanyahu government has sought legislation that would equate Torah study with military service and limit the arrest of draft evaders. In 2024, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara ordered the Labor Ministry to cut daycare subsidies for the children of ultra-Orthodox yeshivah students who disobey military draft orders.

Netanyahu, however, wants to restore such subsidies. In other words, the government has moved from enforcement to reversal.

Whenever the issue of Haredi draft dodging comes up, I’m reminded of the U.S. military’s practice of shaving recruits’ heads as part of standardization. Imagine if the IDF did that to the Haredim. Instead, the army bends over backward to accommodate the demands of even the more moderate Orthodox soldiers who may refuse to serve in units with women or to be trained by them. The army recently backed down after leaders of Hesder yeshivas (institutions that combine Torah study with military service) threatened to stop sending their students to the Armored Corps over the proposed inclusion of women in tanks alongside men.

The ultra-Orthodox fear that their children will lose their religion in a secular army, though thousands of observant Jews proudly serve in the IDF. Nevertheless, many Israelis would gladly accept some alternative form of national service for those unwilling to join. Even that compromise has largely been rejected by Haredi leadership, which insists that Torah study alone fulfills their national obligation.

While there are valid issues to find here, the only problem is whether the writer's being altruistic. If he's just attacking Netanyahu - but wouldn't attack a left-wing politician who did the same - what good is this critique?

That aside, it's pretty clear at this point the Haredis aren't going to accept even simple national service, based on their increasing belief in segregation from wider society. That's wrong, as was the attack on a supreme court justice while distributing leaflets that looked like Israeli flags with a swastika in the middle. That incident amounted a most anti-semitic act, and as a result, how are the clans who do such a repulsive thing any different from antisemitic movements in non-Jewish societies?

What began as David Ben-Gurion’s original exemption—intended for a few hundred exceptional scholars—has evolved into a blanket exclusion for an entire community. This is no longer simply a question of fairness. It is a question of national survival.

Today, roughly one-quarter of Israelis reaching military age are Haredi. By 2050, that figure could approach 40%. If current exemption rates continue, then the burden on the shrinking pool of secular and national-religious soldiers will become unsustainable. As that burden grows, reservists will serve longer and more frequently, imposing growing costs on families, employers and the economy.

Equally concerning is the economic model that successive governments have enabled. Many Haredi schools provide no instruction in mathematics, English or science, leaving graduates ill-equipped for modern employment. Hence, the employment rate among Haredi men remains dramatically below that of other Jewish Israelis, while many employed Haredi women work in lower-paying or part-time positions. [...]

Ironically, Israel’s Arab citizens increasingly demonstrate the opposite trajectory. While significant socioeconomic gaps remain, Arab participation in higher education, professional occupations and the workforce has steadily increased as more seek to improve their standard of living. The Institute for National Security Studies has noted that whereas much of the Arab sector is moving toward greater economic integration, Haredi leadership largely seeks to preserve the existing system of dependency and exemption.

The Haredi leadership is no longer content merely to preserve its own way of life; it increasingly seeks to extend its religious norms into Israel’s public sphere.

For years, the ultra-Orthodox have imposed their standards at the Western Wall, where restrictions on women’s prayer and the rejection of non-Orthodox religious practices have alienated many Israelis and much of the Diaspora. Their ambitions now extend well beyond holy sites. In Bnei Brak, municipal rabbis recently ordered gender segregation on the sidewalks of two major streets. At the national level, Netanyahu’s coalition has advanced legislation allowing universities and colleges to offer gender-segregated master’s and doctoral programs—a proposal so troubling that Israel’s university presidents and medical school deans publicly warned it would undermine academic freedom and equality.

These are not isolated disputes. They reflect a broader effort to redefine Israel’s public institutions according to ultra-Orthodox religious doctrine.

On the part about Bnei Brak, the municipality did appear to reverse their plans after backlash, but for all we know, they could still enforce them without signposts too. As for the legislation, yes, that's sadly a dumb move, because it's just implying Netanyahu's trying to survive at all costs, rather than make an effort to convince the Haredi public it'd be better to vote for Likud instead. He certainly shouldn't be letting them blackmail anybody on the right.

Since we're on the topic, there's also a troubling item about plans to give the old Bikur Holim hospital building to a Haredi girls' seminar:

The fate of the capital’s oldest Jewish hospital, Bikur Cholim – opened on Straus Street in 1925 after moving from the Old City and closed in 2020 – will determine whether downtown Jerusalem is accessible to all its residents.

So said Havilio, the longtime community activist and politician who, for decades, has represented the voice of the secular, pluralistic, and traditional community in the haredi (ultra-Orthodox)-dominated municipality and is a deputy mayor heading the Ha’ihud Ha’Yerushalmi faction.

The municipality had approved plans to allocate the historic and much more beautiful eastern building for a seminary for 1,000 haredi teenage girls run by the Slonim Hassidic community, triggering an uproar among liberal Jerusalemites. Havilio said the mayor’s plan was illegal, and various opponents threatened a lawsuit.

“This is a historic mistake,” Havilio told In Jerusalem. “At present, the border between haredi residents and institutions and non-haredi ones is on Hanevi’im Street. A haredi seminary would move the border by a few meters south to Jaffa Road. The city center will then not be allowed to have places of entertainment, cafés, or stores that could remain open on Shabbat or any liberal projects.

I think it is wrong to turn what could make an important museum into something isolated, Now, here's yet another, more troubling piece that certainly confirms what the first one's allegedly concerned about:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemns “horrific” comments made by Rabbi Dov Lando, the spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox Degel Hatorah political faction, who said yesterday that religious soldiers were committing murder by serving in the army.

Lando denounced those in the religious Zionist community who serve in the army, at a meeting with heads of the Mir Yeshiva, at his home in Bnei Brak: “I am speaking about those with knitted kippas that are required to go.”

“If the state sends people, soldiers, for the honor of the state, and they kill people, is that also permissible? It’s very much murder. So they incite murder. They wage wars not only for the sake of salvation, but for the honor of the state,” he said.

In a statement released by his office, Netanyahu condemns the comments.

“IDF soldiers, secular and Haredi, leave their homes, their work and their families, and risk their lives in order to protect the State of Israel, its citizens and all of the nation of Israel,” Netanyahu says.

“They deserve deep appreciation, gratitude, and full support from all segments of the public, and certainly from the world of Torah,” the statement reads.

One could reasonably wonder if Lando sympathizes with Islamic jihadists. His words certainly tell exactly what the Hamas would want to hear, and Lando's effectively desecrated the memory of millions of victims of barbarism in all forms. Based on this, how can such Haredi clans claim they're not antisemitic/self-haters? In this report, it notes that:

Rabbi Lando accused Religious Zionist figures who support IDF enlistment of encouraging “actual murder," claiming that soldiers are sent to fight “not only for the sake of saving lives, but also for the honor of the state."

Here, it sounds like he's saying it's inherently wrong to save innocent lives, and acting as though honor for the state is also wrong. And then we wonder how else October 7, 2023 occurred, in addition to irresponsible military officials. Lando's lack of moral compass is another reason why the tragedy occurred. He shouldn't be recognized as a rabbi at all. He's nothing but a shoddy fraud in a black suit and hat who's more addicted to the socialist ideology than serious liberty and freedom. People like him are exactly what's taking us back to the dark ages.

So as far as national security crises go, Lando's definitely providing examples of why we need to be on the lookout for 5th column inciters who're as bad as their more leftist counterparts.