There are legitimate arguments in Israel’s debate over military service for the Haredi community. There are arguments about preserving Torah study, protecting religious freedom and integrating traditional young men into military service while respecting their way of life.
What happened last week on Israel’s highways was not one of those arguments.
Thousands of Haredi protesters blocked major highways and train lines, disrupted the lives of hundreds of thousands of fellow Israelis and clashed with police in protest of the arrest of draft evaders. Some sat in front of vehicles. Others blocked railroad tracks. Some carried signs declaring, “Young man is detained = road is blocked.”
And some chose to wear yellow stars. That act alone deserves condemnation.
Nor was it an isolated incident. Similar displays have appeared at anti-draft demonstrations before. The message is unmistakable: these protesters are deliberately equating enforcement of Israeli law with Nazi persecution.
The yellow star was not a symbol of political disagreement. It was a badge imposed by a regime that systematically murdered 6 million Jews. To compare the detention of draft evaders by a Jewish state to the persecution of European Jewry is historically illiterate, morally obscene and a desecration of Holocaust memory.
Few communities owe more to the State of Israel than the Haredi community. The great Torah centers of Europe were destroyed in the Holocaust. The flourishing yeshivot and religious institutions of today were rebuilt under the protection of Jewish sovereignty and with the support of Israeli taxpayers.
Yet some of the beneficiaries of that extraordinary achievement now compare the Jewish state to the regime that murdered European Jewry. It is difficult to imagine a more offensive distortion of history.
For 78 years, Israeli governments have protected, funded and accommodated the Haredi world through exemptions, subsidies and special arrangements unavailable to most other citizens. No other segment of Israeli society has received comparable relief from such a fundamental civic obligation.
Israel today faces threats on multiple fronts. Reservists have served hundreds of days away from their families. Young men and women from every corner of Israeli society have been wounded and killed defending the country. The Israel Defense Forces continue to warn of manpower shortages even as reservists answer call-up after call-up, leaving behind jobs, businesses and families.
Under those circumstances, the claim that one community is entitled to the benefits of citizenship while remaining largely exempt from its responsibilities is not merely difficult to defend. It is offensive.
No one is compelled to live in Israel. Those who reject the obligations of Israeli citizenship are free to build their communities elsewhere. Their institutions can leave. Their leaders can leave.
What they are not free to do is demand that millions of other Israelis defend the state, fund the state and die for the state while they insist the obligations of citizenship apply only to someone else.
This is not a debate about religion. It is a debate about equality before the law. Israel has spent 78 years accommodating the Haredi community. The question now is whether the Haredi community is prepared to accept the responsibilities that accompany the benefits of citizenship.
The answer should be obvious. A nation cannot ask some citizens to fight for it, sacrifice for it and die for it while others insist they are entitled only to be protected by it.
