Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Forza, Bibi!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/14/netanyahu-coalition-split-draft-orthodox
 
 
Israeli coalition split by demands to make ultra-Orthodox Jews serve in army
Binyamin Netanyahu in crisis talks over bill to extend conscription and 
end a right to exemption that has lasted for 64 years
 
Protesters in Tel Aviv demand extension of compulsory military or 
community service to all Israelis, including Arabs and ultra-Orthodox 
Jews, who are currently exempted. Photograph: David Buimovitch/AFP
Proposals to draft ultra-Orthodox men into the Israeli army, ending an 
exemption that has lasted for 64 years, are bitterly dividing prime 
minister Binyamin Netanyahu's coalition government ahead of a crucial 
debate on Monday.
 
A new bill allowing the draft is due to be submitted for its first 
reading in the Knesset, following a ruling by the country's supreme 
court that the Tal Law, exempting Haredi Jews from military service, was 
unconstitutional. That law is due to expire on 1 August, but what will 
replace it has become the subject of ferocious argument over one of the 
most sensitive issues in Israeli society.
 
As Netanyahu faced a weekend of crisis talks with his deputy and 
political rival, Kadima leader Shaul Mofaz, senior government sources 
conceded that their chances of reaching a solution to save their 
coalition were slim. Mofaz argues that Haredi conscription is essential 
to share the burden of service that now falls on secular Israelis, who 
serve three years in the military after attending high school and can be 
called up for reserve duty until the age of 45.
 
Netanyahu's Likud party agrees in part but insists that to force the 
Haredim – a population of around 700,000 – into the army in "one fell 
swoop" after 64 years of exemption is impossible. "I would like to see 
the Haredim join the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] at 18 years old," Moshe 
Ya'alon, strategic affairs minister and an ally of Netanyahu's, told 
Israel's army radio last week. "But if we try this, we will start a 
civil war."
 
The debate has gripped the Jewish state. For Israel's ultra-Orthodox, 
the preservation of the Haredim's right to study rather than serve 
represents a battle for the preservation of the Jewish people, pitting 
the value of the body against the worth of the soul.
 
In Haredi communities the mood is defiant. Mea Shearim is a closed, 
strictly ultra-Orthodox community on the outskirts of Jerusalem's Old 
City. Apart from the murmur of prayers in the yeshivas and the 
occasional shout of young schoolboys, its old stone alleyways are 
hushed. Men in broad hats and frockcoats walk the streets quickly, their 
eyes cast to the ground. Life here has not changed for hundreds of years 
and no one thinks it will change now.
 
"The best life in the world is from those red traffic lights until the 
end of this street," boasted Yossi, 28, indicating the borders of Mea 
Shearim where he was born and raised. "About 50% of people here do not 
hold Israeli IDs. They were here hundreds of years before Israel. The 
government can do whatever it wants; the people here will go and sit in 
jail rather than go to the army. They will never serve."
 
Pointing out a woman who was covered head to toe in black, lace covering 
her face and pushing a pram briskly along the pavement – her child also 
entirely obscured with black cloth – he said people here were becoming 
more religious.
 
Yossi did serve in the army but he describes himself as religious rather 
than Orthodox. "My father didn't speak to me when I joined the army. He 
said, 'I'm not your father any more.' But after two years he got over 
it," he said. "I think a little differently. I believe if you take from 
the government you have to give back to it."
 
This is the opinion of most Israelis, many of whom are outraged that the 
state pours money into a community that does not work, typically has 
large numbers of children, does not pay taxes and does not serve in the 
military.
 
Last Saturday about 20,000 people demonstrated in Tel Aviv to demand 
that the country's Orthodox and Arab citizens share the burden of 
military service. Senior retired military figures and political leaders, 
including the former opposition leader Tzipi Livni, joined the crowd of 
protesters, calling for "one people, one draft".
 
Yosam Merav, a 16-year-old from Tel Aviv, stood with his father in front 
of a sign reading "the suckers' tent". He said: "I'm about to be 
enlisted. I'm happy to serve but I want to feel like the country I serve 
is a country where everything is equal. I don't want to feel like a sucker."
 
Yaakov Uri, who runs a pizza parlour in Geula, an Orthodox neighbourhood 
in Jerusalem, said the problem was that secular Israelis like Yosam had 
no understanding of the sacrifices religious Jews make for them. "You 
think it's so easy to sit and study all day, bring up seven children on 
$700 a month? No, it's very hard," he said.
 
These men, in his opinion, are as critical for the defence of Israel as 
the army. They provide spiritual protection. "The Torah is saving and 
guarding the Jews," Uri said. "Take the Iraq war. Saddam Hussein sent 39 
Scud missiles into Israel. They didn't touch anyone. What is this? It 
wasn't the army – they sat with their arms folded. It was the Torah," he 
said. "There many kinds of soldiers, on planes, on ships, but also in 
the yeshiva."
 
As a compromise, he suggested that yeshiva students who were not truly 
devoted to Torah studies – around one-third, he thought – should serve 
in the army. But this was provided, of course, that they were served 
kosher food, given enough time to pray and segregated from women.
 
Like Uri, Yakov Horowitz believes that the current crisis is the result 
of the ignorance of secular Israelis. Formerly a barrister in the United 
States, he is now an Orthodox rabbi running a religious school in Mea 
Shearim.
 
"Mofaz is just a politician trying to get votes, but I'd like to tell 
him you are hurting yourself more than you realise," Horowitz said. "The 
burden is equal already, shared between the body and the soul. If the 
soul is not getting an equal part in the battle against our enemies, we 
will lose. It would be a fatal mistake."
 
Like Moshe Ya'alon, Horowitz warned that, if the Haredim were pushed 
into the army, the result would be explosive. People who valued the 
Haredim's role in society, he said, would protect it "by any means 
possible".
-- 
Namib
 
Necessaria sunt immutabilia (A. G. Baumgarten)
 

On 14 Lug, 17:00, Namib <zanzi@bar> wrote:
 
solo un sinistrato può essere contento del fatto che venga imposto a
tutti il servizio militare, anzichè, al contrario, permettere
l'obiezione di coscienza a tutti.

 l'obiezione di coscienza a tutti.
 
E oggi č anche sabato; spero tu non debba servir messa, domani...
