"Ultra-Orthodox use Holocaust imagery; Israelis widely condemn protest" by Aron Heller | Associated Press, January 02, 2012
JERUSALEM - Images of ultra-Orthodox Jews dressed up as Nazi concentration camp inmates during a protest drew widespread condemnation yesterday and added a new twist to a simmering battle over growing extremism inside Israel’s insular ultra-Orthodox community.
Yeah, it occurs to me that nothing I write here has any impact on Jewish identity or existence; they are destroying themselves from within.
Religious extremists are facing increasing criticism for their efforts to separate men and women in public spaces, and Saturday’s protest, in which a child mimicked an iconic photo of a terrified Jewish boy in the Warsaw Ghetto, added to the outrage.
Imagine the uproar and extensive coverage if they were Muslim. I mean, we are bombarded by our Zionist media about that being one of the problems with Muslims, right?
Thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews gathered Saturday night in Jerusalem to protest what they say is a nationwide campaign directed against their lifestyle.
Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial center denounced the use of Nazi imagery as “disgraceful,’’ and several survivors’ groups and politicians condemned the acts.
“We must leave the Holocaust and its symbols outside the arguments in Israeli society,’’ said Moshe Zanbar, chairman of the main umbrella group for Holocaust survivors in Israel. “This harms the memory of the Holocaust.’’
Yes, must protect the myth at all co$t$, if you know what I mean.
Six million Jews were killed by German Nazis and their collaborators during World War II.
Well, there is some dispute about the number and how they died, but....
About 200,000 survivors of the Holocaust live in Israel.
Many of them in poverty. Zionist paper doesn't make a point of emphasizing that though.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews make up 10 percent of Israel’s population. In the past, they have generally confined their strict lifestyle to their own neighborhoods. But they have become increasingly aggressive in trying to impose their ways on others, as their population has grown.
That's why they are not well-liked. Has nothing to do with being Jewish (or maybe it does considering how many agendas they are ultimately behind and how many levers they have to promote their lies).
Extremist sects within the ultra-Orthodox community have been under fire of late for their attempts to ban mixing of the sexes on buses, sidewalks, and other public spaces.
Yes, the poor militant terrorists are under fire for their supremacism, can you believe it?
In one city, extremists have jeered and spit at girls walking to school, saying they were dressed immodestly. They’ve also battled with police over street signs calling for segregation and attacked journalists who have covered their neighborhoods.
These practices, albeit by a fringe sect, have unleashed a backlash against the ultra-Orthodox in general, the climax of which came last week in a large demonstration where protesters held signs reading, “Free Israel from religious coercion’’ and “Stop Israel from becoming Iran.’’
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"Ultra-Orthodox mark Holocaust quietly; Remembrance Day is not part of their grief" by Aron Heller | Associated Press, January 27, 2012
JERUSALEM - It is a huge question for observant Jews: How can one still believe in a merciful God after suffering through the worst genocide in history?
The question has to be how can they perpetrate such a thing now, right, right?
As the world marks Holocaust Remembrance Day today, members of Israel’s most devout group will remember the victims with prayer, study of scripture, and a deep conviction in a grand plan that is beyond their earthly comprehension.
Gross. I mean, there are protocols we are told are fake but which have been remarkably carried out.
Many notable survivors, including Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, have famously questioned where God was during the Holocaust.
I'm sorry, but to hell with the Holohoax™ from 70 years ago. Where is God now?
Related: Elie Wiesel's book is now suspected to be another in a long series of literary hoaxes
It's devastating to someone who once loved the study of history and believed.
But survivors from the insular ultra-Orthodox community say they felt a divine presence even in the worst places imaginable.
After years of silence, a small group of pious elderly survivors have begun meeting in a weekly support group at a senior center in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Mea Shearim in Jerusalem, sharing their thoughts on how they reconcile with a God that allowed the destruction of their homes, their families, and 6 million of their people....
The ultra-Orthodox support group is the first of its kind, and members say their community’s public silence on the Holocaust has been misunderstood.
As if the entire world media apparatus isn't enough.
In the eyes of most secular Israelis, the ultra-Orthodox have, at best, a cavalier approach to the Holocaust.
Well, considering the Zionist used it to help colonize Palestine that would be the way you distance yourself from guilt.
When Israel holds its own Holocaust commemorations each spring, the ultra-Orthodox do not participate. They ignore the two-minute air raid siren that brings the country to a standstill, calling it a foreign ritual unfit for Jews. They shun the somber songs and speeches of official ceremonies and reject the Israeli ethos of a Zionist state rising out the ashes of the Holocaust.
Then wtf are they doing there?
This has fueled anger toward the ultra-Orthodox from mainstream Israelis, who resent the closed community for avoiding military service, imposing religious restrictions on others, and for collecting government subsidies to study in seminaries rather than entering the work force.
Un-flipping-real.
And what does mainstream Israeli mean? The government is increasingly made up of extremist elements as their population as percentage of society swells and they usurp more Palestinian land -- later approved by the government.
There have been street clashes, during which extremists in the ultra-Orthodox community have further antagonized other Israelis by calling policemen and journalists Nazis.
Yeah, yeah, those guys again.
See: Nazis Then and Now
Well, yeah, but....
At a recent protest by a fringe group against secular resistance to ultra-Orthodox gender segregation, demonstrators wore yellow Nazi-like Star of David patches with the word “Jude,’’ German for Jew. They dressed their children in striped black-and-white uniforms associated with Nazi camps. The image of a child mimicking an iconic photo of a terrified Jewish boy in the Warsaw Ghetto appeared on the front of every newspaper.
Most ultra-Orthodox denounced such protests, but that made little difference to mainstream Israelis.
Yet these provocations belie the fact that the ultra-Orthodox community was perhaps the hardest hit of any in World War II. Easily identified by their long beards, sidelocks, and distinctive black garb, they were targeted first. Nearly all their seminaries were destroyed, their rabbinical leaders murdered, and the community almost entirely obliterated.
Unlike the Zionists, who found comfort in establishing Israel, or the communists who sought immersion in the Soviet Union, the ultra-Orthodox largely had no solace in the war’s aftermath, said Amos Goldberg, a Holocaust scholar at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem....
You so rarely see such words in AmeriKa, folks. You say Zionist to someone and a look comes over their face that says they don't know what you mean. It's a foreign word and an unknown concept to them.
Rabbi Benjamin Kovalsky, who organizes the meetings. “Every week we deliver a slap to Hitler with the very fact that we are here.’’
Can we please get off that guy, or I will once again have to bring up all the misconceptions -- hell, call 'em what they are, lies -- again?
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"Israeli leaders, rabbis decry effort to seat women in rear of buses; Ultra-Orthodox persist in defying 2010 court ruling" December 19, 2011|By Amy Teibel, Associated Press
JERUSALEM - Israel’s political leaders and chief rabbis yesterday condemned persistent efforts by ultra-Orthodox Jewish men to shunt Israeli women to the back of public buses, a year after the country’s Supreme Court outlawed the practice.
The outcry came in reaction to an Israeli woman’s experience of being asked to move to the back of a bus, which was posted on Facebook and became a cause celebre in the Israeli media yesterday. The case drew a rebuke from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who deplored gender segregation.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews, who make up about 10 percent of Israel’s population of 7.6 million, have become increasingly aggressive in their efforts to impose their norms in public spaces. The ultra-Orthodox have segregated bus lines and some walkways in their neighborhoods.
In Jerusalem, billboards depicting women have become a rarity because ultra-Orthodox vandals rip them down.
Oh, they are just vandals.
The issue also has seeped into the military, where religious soldiers walked out of a military event several months ago because women were singing - which extremely devout Jews believe is contrary to Jewish law.
That explains the treatment of Palestinians.
In the past, ultra-Orthodox Jews have confined their strict practices to their neighborhoods, alongside occasional attempts to pass restrictive legislation banning sale of pork or opening shops on the Jewish Sabbath.
Recently the extremist Jews have been trying to impose their norms outside their enclaves, but the effects are scattered. Most of Israel’s secular majority is not directly affected....
Yes, they are never militants, or insurgents, or terrorists.
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"Israel turns inward over role of religion; Ultra-Orthodox moves against women decried" by Ethan Bronner and Isabel Kershner | New York Times, January 15, 2012
This is the point where I start not to care, sorry.
JERUSALEM - A few months ago, the Israeli Health Ministry awarded Channa Maayan, a pediatrics professor at Hebrew University, a prize for a book she had co-written on hereditary diseases common among Jews.
For the ceremony, Maayan wore a long-sleeve top and a long skirt in deference to the acting health minister, Yakov Litzman, who is ultra-Orthodox, and the other religious people attending. But that was hardly enough. Not only did Maayan and her husband have to sit separately, because men and women were segregated at the event, but she was instructed that a male colleague would have to accept the award for her because women were not permitted on stage.
Though shocked that this was happening at a government ceremony, Maayan bit her tongue. But others have not, and her story is entering the pantheon of secular anger building as a battle rages in Israel for control of the public space between the strictly religious and everyone else.
At a time when there is no progress on the Palestinian dispute, Israelis are turning inward and discovering that an issue they had neglected - the place of the ultra-Orthodox Jews - has erupted into a crisis.
And it is centered on women.
“Just as secular nationalism and socialism posed challenges to the religious establishment a century ago, today the issue is feminism,’’ said Moshe Halbertal, a professor of Jewish philosophy at Hebrew University. “This is an immense ideological and moral challenge that touches at the core of life, and just as it is affecting the Islamic world, it is the main issue that the rabbis are losing sleep over.’’
The list of controversies grows weekly:
■Organizers of a conference last week on women’s health and Jewish law barred women from speaking from the podium, leading at least eight speakers to cancel.
■Ultra-Orthodox men spit on an 8-year-old girl whom they deemed immodestly dressed.
■The chief rabbi of the air force resigned his post because the army declined to excuse ultra-Orthodox soldiers from attending events where female singers perform.
■Protesters depicted the Jerusalem police commander as Hitler on posters because he instructed public bus lines with mixed-sex seating to drive in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods.
Public discourse in Israel is suddenly dominated by a new, high-toned Hebrew phrase, “hadarat nashim,’’ or the exclusion of women. The term is everywhere in recent weeks, rather like the way the phrase “male chauvinism’’ emerged decades ago in the United States.
All of this seems anomalous to most people in a nation where five young women just graduated from the air force’s prestigious pilots course and a woman presides over the Supreme Court. But each side in this dispute is waging a vigorous public campaign.
The New Israel Fund, which advocates for equality and democracy, organized singalongs and concerts featuring women in Jerusalem and put up posters of women’s faces under the slogan “Women should be seen and heard.’’
Religious authorities said liberal groups were waging a war of hatred against a pious sector that wanted only to be left in peace.
Can you wage a war of love?
And I think they misspelled that? Don't they mean piece as in piece of Palestine?
That sector, the black-clad ultra-Orthodox, is known in Israel as Haredim, meaning those who tremble before God. It includes many groups with distinct approaches to liturgy as well as to coat length, beard and side locks for men and different hair coverings for women. Among them are the Hasidim of European origin as well as those from Middle Eastern countries who are represented by the political party Shas.
The Ashkenazi usurpers!
They number 1 million, a mostly poor community in an otherwise fairly well-off country of 7.8 million.
Even with the government subsidies and exemptions?
They tend to stay out of the normal Israeli politics of war and peace, often staying neutral on the Palestinian question and focusing their dealmaking on the material and spiritual needs of their constituents.
Certainly they can not be serious with the first part of that sentence?
In other words, while rejecting the state, the ultra-Orthodox have survived by making deals with it. And while dismissing the group, have survived by trading subsidies for its votes. Now each has to live with the other, and the resulting friction is hard to contain.
Oh, the poor Israeli Zionist ripping themselves to pieces. The horror!!!
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And let me get this straight: the rabid Zionist extremists don't serve in the military?
"Ruling on military service roils Israel; Court throws out exemption for ultra-Orthodox" by Ethan Bronner | New York Times, February 23, 2012
JERUSALEM - The Israeli Supreme Court has invalidated a law that exempted from military service ultra-Orthodox Jews engaged in religious studies, adding a new urgency to the government’s negotiations with religious parties over a more equitable distribution of the burdens of citizenship.
The 6-to-3 decision, handed down late Tuesday, declared the so-called Tal Law unconstitutional at a time of growing tension in Israel over the place of the ultra-Orthodox. The law, in effect since 2002, granted exemptions to tens of thousands of religious academy students. It was widely viewed as a failure, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had said it would not be renewed when it expired this summer.
Still, the ruling will force the government to come up with a new way forward, one likely to meet strong resistance from religious party coalition members.
Departing Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch, writing for the court majority, said the law had failed to live up to its aim of increasing the number of ultra-Orthodox in the army. Using data presented by the army, the decision noted that last year fewer than 1,300 ultra-Orthodox youths enlisted out of a pool of 8,500, a rate of 15 percent. Among the rest of the Jewish population, the enlistment rate is 75 percent.
“Originally the legislation harbored the hope that the law would launch a social process that without coercion would encourage ultra-Orthodox people to serve in the military or take part in national civil service,’’ she wrote. “These hopes were dashed.’’
The place of the ultra-Orthodox, also known as the Haredim, has long been controversial in Israel, but the issue has heated up in recent months. As a group, the Haredim do not accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state before the arrival of the Messiah and believe that the primary task of men should be studying Torah.
Oh, it's a religious kook sect that believes Israel must be prepared for the Messiah along the lines of the Christian rapture (blog editor gives big Bronx cheer to both).
During the social protests last summer, when hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets and accused the government of not sharing the country’s wealth properly, the subsidies offered to the ultra-Orthodox were often invoked, especially because so many do not serve in the army and do not work, while typically having eight children per family.
Wow, TALK ABOUT YOUR OUT-OF-CONTROL WELFARE! And then they turn around and are DAMN UNGRATEFULS!!!
Yesterday, politicians across the political spectrum - except the ultra-Orthodox - praised the Supreme Court’s decision.
“After 10 years, the Tal Law has not met expectations at all,’’ said Defense Minister Ehud Barak, “and has not led to any change in terms of equal sharing of the burden and enlarging the circle of participants in civil duties.’’
Tzipi Livni, head of the centrist Kadima Party, said: “Justice has been done. Social justice comes from equal sharing of the burden. Tomorrow, we will initiate a set of bills that require service of all - either military, national, or civilian service.’’
The leaders of religious parties were livid.
Yaakov Margi, the religious affairs minister from the Shas Party, said: “It’s clear that now the state will have to present a different and rational solution. All of us - the government, the security establishment, and the leaders of the Haredi public - will have to sit at a round table and find a reasonable formula that will lead to equal sharing in the burden, and will still provide a solution for those whose Torah study is their vocation. Each of us will have to be flexible.’’
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"Israeli ultra-Orthodox groups to fight draft law" February 28, 2012
JERUSALEM - Ultra-Orthodox parties inside Israel’s government say they will oppose any new law that would apply Israel’s compulsory military draft to ultra-Orthodox men - a stance that bodes ill for the stability of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition.
I am actually against this. Israel doesn't need an even more extremist army (if that's possible).
Last week, Israel’s Supreme Court overturned a law that has helped tens of thousands of religious men avoid military service and pursue state-sponsored religious studies instead. The privilege has created widespread resentment among Israel’s secular majority and encouraged ultra-Orthodox men to become lifelong students, reducing their large families to living off state handouts....
In a rare show of unity, rival ultra-Orthodox parties met Sunday night to join ranks against any modifications that would expose their constituents to the draft.
????????
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"Netanyahu coalition faces thorny issue of military draft; Ultrareligious young men have been excluded" y Josef Federman | Associated Press, May 10, 2012
JERUSALEM - A controversial practice that has allowed tens of thousands of young ultra-Orthodox men to avoid compulsory military service has emerged as a looming test for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new coalition government - one that could create major mayhem in the Jewish state.
Poor Israel and their internal political squabbles, 'eh?
Facing a court-ordered deadline, Netanyahu says he is committed to obeying the ruling and overhauling the system. And backed by his new coalition partner, Kadima Party leader Shaul Mofaz, he is in a strong position to overcome the objections of an increasingly agitated ultrareligious minority that considers the draft an assault on its way of life.
The issue of the draft exemptions was a key factor in this week’s Israeli government shake-up.
Oh, that is what was behind the call for early elections scam.
Unable to bridge differences between religious and secular elements in his coalition, Netanyahu said Monday he would hold a new parliamentary election in September - more than a year ahead of schedule. Then, in a stunning last-minute reversal, he reached a deal to bring the centrist Kadima into his government, shoring up the coalition and averting the need for elections.
The new alliance gives Netanyahu a wide 94-seat bloc in the 120-member Parliament, one of the broadest coalitions in Israeli history.
Uh-oh. Look out, world.
With Kadima’s backing, Netanyahu can no longer be held hostage by smaller parties that had threatened to bring down the government on the issue.
He's a Zionist war criminal -- being held hostage(?).
Conscription in Israel is compulsory, with men over 18 serving three years in the military and women two. Those who cannot or do not want to serve can do community service in schools, hospitals, and other public institutions.
At a news conference, both Netanyahu and Mofaz said a resolution to the draft debate would be a pillar of the new coalition’s agenda. The Supreme Court declared the current system unconstitutional in February and has ordered the government to come up with an alternative by July 31.
That will not be easy. Lingering rifts inside the government were evident Wednesday, as ultra-Orthodox and secular coalition members sparred about the draft law.
Speaking to the Army Radio station, lawmaker Yitzhak Cohen of the religious Shas Party said “it’s an illusion’’ to expect a court decision would force seminary students to serve in the military. Moshe Gafni, a leader in the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism Party, warned of a brewing “cultural civil war.’’
But Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the fiercely secular Yisrael Beitenu Party, said there could be no “foot dragging’’ on the matter. Lieberman’s plan to push legislation ending the exemptions helped spark the coalition crisis that resulted in Tuesday’s deal.
For now, both Yisrael Beitenu and the ultra-Orthodox factions - which each control about 15 seats in Parliament - remain in the coalition, though it’s possible some could defect as the government moves forward with new legislation over the summer.
An Israeli official said a final plan was unlikely to demand that all ultra-Orthodox men enter the military immediately after the deadline passes. Instead, he said the plan would be implemented incrementally and probably would include an option to perform civilian national service rather than joining the army.
Translation: no change
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"Peace settlement will require dividing Jerusalem, Ehud Olmert says; Netanyahu insists Israel will keep the capital as it is" by Amy Teibel | Associated Press, May 21, 2012
JERUSALEM - Former prime minister Ehud Olmert urged Israeli leaders Sunday to relinquish the idea of a unified Jerusalem if they truly want peace, contending in a pair of interviews that years of government neglect have kept the Jewish and Arab sectors irreparably divided.
The comments, made as Israel marked the 45th anniversary of capturing East Jerusalem, were nearly unprecedented for a mainstream Israeli leader and put Olmert at odds with his successor, Benjamin Netanyahu. Celebrating Israel’s control of the city on the Jewish state’s “Jerusalem Day,’’ Netanyahu declared his government was committed to keeping it the country’s undivided capital.
“No Israeli government since 1967 has done even a smidgen of what was needed in order to unify the city in practical terms. That is a tragedy that is going to lead us, for want of another choice, to making inevitable political concessions,’’ Olmert told the Maariv daily.
Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war and immediately annexed the area, home to sensitive Jewish, Christian, and Muslim holy sites as well as a large Arab population. The Palestinians hope to make East Jerusalem the capital of an independent state including the neighboring West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Speaking Sunday evening from the site of a Jerusalem battle from that war, Netanyahu said the city will not be partitioned. “Israel without Jerusalem is like a body without a heart. And our heart will never be divided again,’’ he said.
The future of Jerusalem is one of the thorniest issues at the core of the conflict. Jerusalem’s old city is home to a compound sacred to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.
Jews revere it as the site of their two biblical Temples and Muslims regard it as Islam’s third-holiest site.
“There are those who believe that if we only divide Jerusalem, and that means giving up the Temple Mount, they believe we will have peace,’’ Netanyahu said. “I am doubtful, to say the least, that if we deposit that square of the Temple Mount with other forces, that we won’t quickly deteriorate to a religious sectarian war.’’
“I know that only under Israeli control is accessibility and religious freedom ensured, and will continue to be ensured to all the religions. Only under Israel will the quiet be preserved, only under Israel will the peace between the religions be ensured,’’ Netanyahu said.
That's such an arrogant statement when it is Palestinians that guard the Church of Bethlehem.
And Israel has done more than anyone to foment the opposite with their false flags!!!
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Also see: B'Tselem
Neturei Karta
Yes, there are good ultra-Orthodox and other Jews, but that is not to whom my paper is referring.
Also see: One last journey into the night
On that issue, yeah.
Family found
Not here.
I used to love history, but it's not funny anymore.
Related: Ancient jewelry unearthed in Israel
Israeli seminary to allow gay rabbis
Can you believe they are behind that agenda, too? Anything to divide so they can hide.
