S5 Ep18 - Civil Unrest - The Draft Crisis and Israel's Internal Reckoning

Um, okay, so since you're there and, uh, we're gonna talk about probably one of the most difficult and explosive conversations inside of Israel right now, which is the growing unrest around Haredi enlistment, army service, Torah learning, what authority does the government have to say what people should do or whether they should serve, and a question, I think, of sh- shared responsibility, right? Who does what in order to preserve and protect a Jewish state? So in recent days, tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox protesters have taken to the streets against mandatory military conscription.

They've been block- blocking roads and trains.

Um, and at the same time, we're still in the middle of a war, right? We're still under enormous strain, and many of these protests, these violent protests, um, feel particularly tone-deaf.

And also, um, we wanna try to understand our fellow Jews as much as we can.

So I think, I...

You know, we're gonna dig into a little bit of what this is.

So if we wanna understand what's happening, um, so that we're not just approaching it from black or white or judgment or non-judgment, how can we understand what's going on there? And, you know, going to our podcast of Remember What's Next, how does this usually go for us when we are at war with ourselves and each other?

Yeah.

So yeah, being back in Israel, it's something y- um, we're not so aware of living in the diaspora.

Even if we're very in tune to Israel, it's much more in the news here.

Um, a few days ago, the, uh, deputy head of the Supreme Court, his name is, is, uh, Noam Schoenberg.

He, who lives in Alon Shvut, which is in Gush Etzion, north of Jerusalem.

Um, his house was attacked by a bunch of, you ter- use the term Haredi, um, ultra-Orthodox Jews.

I believe they're from the, the Peleg Yerushalayim faction, which we'll, maybe we'll get into at the end.

But they're very, uh, uh...

So over the issue of the Supreme Court ruling about the government has to deal with the issue of the exemptions from the army, which is now at something like 80,000 people are exempt from the army, and apropos of October 7th of 2023, and, uh, the constant state of warfare we've been in, and the huge number of casualties killed and wounded in the army, and the amazingly large amount of, of, of reserve duty that reservists are doing.

Um, especially as, I mean, the c- community that's really been suffering the most and giving the most is the National Religious community, the Dati Leumi community, which has suffered 40% of the casualties in, since October 7th, and is a much smaller percentage of the population than that.

Right.

So this is really out there as a flashpoint.

And we've had-

Mm

...

in recent days, yeah, blocking the train from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, had to turn back.

Blocking roads.

The protests get quite vociferous, to say the least.