Hypocrites, Liars and Jellyfish in the Knesset
This Shabbat we will read the parshiyot of Matot and Masa’ey. These include the request of two-and-a-half tribes – those of Reuven, Gad and half of Menashe – to keep lands on the east side of the Jordan River. Moses rebukes them, initially asking a rhetorical question, “Are your brothers to go to war while you stay here? Why will you turn the minds of the Israelites from crossing into the land that God has given them?” and then continuing to explain how God killed off the generation that left Egypt because they refused to go into the Land of Israel. Moses then agrees to let these tribes keep the land east of the Jordan, but only on condition that the men first cross the Jordan and don’t return until the lands west of the Jordan have been conquered. According to the Book of Joshua, this is what eventually transpired.
Our son and son-in-law are both miluimnikim in combat units, and both have been deployed in Gaza (and our son in Syria) over the past 21 months. Our son-in-law and his wife – our daughter – are both students, with a four-month-old baby. Our son, who works in a well-known high-tech firm, just received another call-up, for 72 days starting in September.
Why is the army yet again calling up our son and son-in-law, and others like them who have already done dozens or hundreds of days of reserve duty? Why is the army stressing families by turning young mothers into single parents, in some cases permanently? Why do my wife and I, like dozens of others in our synagogue, have to yet again worry about getting that knock on the door? There are thousands of able-bodied men of army age who are presently exempted because they wear black suits with white shirts. Why are they being exempted? Because they claim to learn Torah all day? If they learn Torah all day, how did they miss the part about the two-and-a-half tribes? Their “Torah” seems to have omitted that part, which means they’re not really learning Torah at all.
Most of the men getting exemptions are from families that live on the dole, headed by non-working husbands who didn’t risk their lives in the army, and taking money from others in order to subsidize their chosen lifestyle, including getting preferential treatment in obtaining apartments, while our kids are out defending the country when they’re not working or studying to become productive members of society or trying to learn Torah themselves. So it seems the draft-dodgers’ Bible also omits the part where the prophet Elijah says to King Ahav, after the latter had Nabot killed so that he could take Nabot’s vineyard, “Thus said God: Would you murder and take possession?”
On Wednesday morning, the Likud is set to remove Yuli Edelstein from a committee chairmanship because he refuses to advance a bill that will make these service exemptions permanent. The idea is to replace him with someone who will advance such a bill, and thus keep the cowardly parties (commonly mistakenly referred to as the haredi parties) in the coalition’s orbit. In principle, there are actually enough votes in the Knesset to support a bill that demands conscription, and that establishes significant penalties for not serving. But the big mouths in the “opposition” parties would rather perpetuate the present situation than vote with the members of Likud and non-cowardly-party members of the coalition to pass such a bill. You can be sure, however, that in the next election they will go back to crying about how unfair it is that most of the black-clad cowards don’t serve.
I am disgusted by the MKs from Shas, Agudah and Degel Hatorah who continue to steal money from the people who drive the economy and give that money to freeloaders, and who insist that certain young men, who are no less under threat from Israel’s enemies than anyone else living in Israel, be exempted from defending their families and their countrymen, just because they say “I don’t feel like it.” I am disgusted by Likud MKs who don’t have the spine to say, “This is a bigger issue than the coalition and we need to right this wrong”. I am disgusted by the hypocrisy of the Lapids, the Golans and the Libermans, who say they want universal conscription but really only want it they don’t have to cooperate with Bibi, which of course is an impossibility.
I don’t advocate violence against MKs; you can’t have a functioning democracy based on violence. But if an Iranian missile was to fall on the Knesset and dispose of all the MKs who now conspire to ensure that certain Jews are permanently exempted from army service because they’d rather be sitting in a beit midrash all day than sweating in the field in the same pair of underwear and socks for weeks on end, it would be a net gain for the country.
