I was sitting down this morning to prepare this post, when I came across a post on X from Nadav Eyal, one of Israel’s most highly regarded and thoughtful journalists. “Break it,” he called the post.
He’s right. His post is below.
With elections a few months away, people are now beginning to speak about whom they’ll vote for. More and more, I hear people say there’s just one issue. Not foreign policy. Not the war. Not Bibi’s alleged corruption. Not even Smotrich or Ben Gvir, though they are, of course, utterly reprehensible.
An Orthodox rabbi visiting Jerusalem this week told me that when Ben Gvir was in the Five Towns this past weekend, he spoke at five Orthodox synagogues and got standing ovations at all of them. Fortunately, I’d already finished my breakfast.
No, the issue these people are planning to vote on is the Haredim. I’ve now heard countless people say to me, “I’ll vote for anyone, anyone at all, who’ll break this. This has to stop.”
Indeed, it does.
People are speaking about more than voting, actually. They’re speaking of shooting. I heard it said on more than a few occasions, even this week alone.
Watch the video above, and see the terror — and the determination — in the eyes of the wife of Supreme Court Justice Solberg, after her home was attacked by Haredim who did not like the Supreme Court’s doubling down on arresting draft dodgers.
She, too, is right. What, Kristallnacht in Israel? What kind of a self-respecting country puts up with this?
There’s a code to what she’s saying, even in the midst of her fear and her rage (she didn’t prepare these remarks). “I have no other country” and “even if the land is burning” are all references to a song that every Israeli knows. It’s part of the canon — religious (like her) and secular alike, everyone knows it. Everyone.
And yes, the land is aflame.
Which is why some people — more and more people, in fact — are saying, “Shoot them. Just shoot them.” Not to kill, at least at the start. And not many. But shoot them. “They’ll get that we mean business.”
This is simply out of control — and what Netanyahu is doing is trying to dance between the raindrops, stopping the Haredim from getting too out of control so he won’t lose votes from his Likud base, which increasingly detests the Haredim, while not coming down too hard on the Haredim so he doesn’t lose the ultra-Orthodox votes.
It’s all about the election, for Bibi. It’s not about the country.
For many others, it is all about the country. Which is why it’s also about the election.
Will this be his undoing?
In what kind of a country can Haredim attack a senior officer of the Israeli police, who happens to be a bereaved mother who lost her son in the Gaza war, and get away with it? In what kind of country are the protesters, who are clearly endangering her life, not shot on the spot?
In this kind of country.
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Which is why Nadav Eyal posted what he did, shown here with a Google-generated translation:
Jabotinsky was referring to breaking the Histadrut, the enormous and powerful workers’ union, by crossing picket lines. But that was a century ago. The danger isn’t the Histadrut anymore. Even then, by the way, they were at least Zionists.
The danger is those who oppose the state, not from outside, but from within.
I had to go to Tel Aviv on Tuesday for a meeting, so on Monday evening I went to the train website to decide which train to take. The website had a warning plastered over the home page: Because of Haredi protests, which had spread onto the tracks, trains were not running through Tel Aviv.
To see if there were more protests planned for the next day, or if I’d perhaps be able to make it, I turned on the news. A reporter was interviewing a Haredi school principal who had brought his students to the protests. He asked the principal if that wasn’t a bit over the top, stopping school so students could break the law? “It’s a war,” the principal said. “It’s a war.”
He, too, is right. It’s a war.
We’ve shown over the past few years that we know very well how to fight back.
It’s time.
It’s been time for a very long time.
In the end, the Haredim took a day off from tormenting this country, and I was able to go to Tel Aviv. A few moments along the way struck me as “Israel in a nutshell.”
The Jerusalem train station (like some other train and bus stations throughout the country) has the occasional grand piano where passersby can stop to play. Some of the people playing are truly excellent.
This was “a moment.” An Air Force soldier, in his Madei Aleph (dress uniform), playing the piano, which has been plastered with stickers of those who were killed on October 7 or the wars that have followed …
In Tel Aviv, just outside the HaShalom station, there were two tables set up on the sidewalk.
One was this guy, with a sign of the Rebbe that also says משיח, “The Messiah” hanging in the front, with numerous pairs of tefillin for those walking by who might want to put them on.
Just a few meters from him (and watching him), a police officer at a police recruitment table. No picture of the Rebbe at this one. The sign behind her says, “Tel Avi District — Where Professionalism meets Service.”
The smaller print speaks about recruiting the next young generation of police officers. There were, as you can see, no takers. The police force here is a total mess, and is having a bear of a time recruiting new officers. Under Ben Gvir, police resignations have become an issue.
I couldn’t help but notice that she didn’t even have a laptop with her. I get that it can all be done on her phone, but still. Nothing? Nothing to hand out? Nothing to type into other than a phone?
Professionalism …
When I got out of the station, they were both sitting alone. Within a minute, though, he was swarmed with young kids who wanted to put on tefillin. The group actually grew even larger a minute later, but I’d already started walking to my meeting and didn’t stop again to take another shot.
The policewoman, at least while I was there, didn’t get even a single person to go to her table.
Between being a police officer and putting on tefillin, at least at that moment and at that spot, there was no competition.
Which is precisely what the Haredim are banking on.
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