Last week, veteran Israeli-Palestinian peace process negotiator and author Aaron David Miller penned a column for the New York Times in which he wrote the following about Israel: “The country’s demographics look bad — too many ultra-Orthodox Jews, Palestinians and Israeli Arabs and not enough secular Jews.” Normally, when someone looks at a country’s ethnic makeup and identifies the “problem” as the proliferation of everyone except his own kind, the very reasonable obvious objections will be made across the board.
Miller’s line did not engender this outrage, because it was aimed at Haredim, to which the normal rules of civility do not apply in the American media. But he came in for a walloping from what may seem an unlikely source: David Landau. Landau, the former editor of Haaretz, has made shockingly offensive comments about Israel, and is currently Israel correspondent for The Economist, a magazine whose Israel coverage includes just this type of casual bigotry toward the Haredim. (Three weeks ago, the magazine wrote that “the hallmark of haredism is intolerance.”) But Landau was so upset by Miller’s apparent ignorance that he rose to a quite effusive defense of the Haredim in an interview with his former newspaper:
“I’m sitting here and thinking to myself, ‘Could a non-Jewish person have written that?’” asks Landau. “Would Aaron David Miller have written in The New York Times that the demographics in Turkey look bad — too many veiled women and not enough secular Turks?’ Could he get away with writing that? I feel like saying to him, ‘Tell me, have you bothered checking the demographics of the Jewish community of Cleveland, Ohio, where you come from? Today, 49 percent of the Jewish children in New York are Haredi, so Aaron David Miller has to look in his own backyard before he makes this sort of statement. This is the kind of know-it-all elitism that has been so characteristic of the Diaspora Jewish leadership and the Israeli elite for so long. It’s pathetic, and if in this Economist piece, I’ve succeeded in making six people of consequence rethink Jewish demographics, then the whole thing was worth it.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ability to blur the distinctions between Haredim and Orthodox Zionists, maintains Landau, has contributed enormously to his political success. “The fact that it’s been so easy for Bibi to lump together all the Haredi parties with the settlers and make them the bulwark of his coalition — it’s remarkable when you think about it. Has anyone thought about the fact that there are really no Haredim in the West Bank? That in 2005 the Haredim joined Sharon’s government with the full knowledge that this would enable him to move ahead with the disengagement from Gaza? Why hasn’t that left an impact on people?”
Landau makes an important point: identifying Haredim with religious fanaticism shows a disturbing lack of basic knowledge about both Judaism and the state of Israel. Are there incidents of intolerance from the Haredim? Indeed there are, though not on the scale of the hateful blacklisting, threats of violence, and near riot that took place in Tel Aviv when some Chabadniks tried to move into a secular neighborhood.
In truth, neither the yeshiva students nor the secular Jews are accurately represented by the few among them who misbehave. And American Jews probably hope that Israelis don’t think Miller is representative of the level of knowledge and engagement of the Diaspora.
"And American Jews probably hope that Israelis don’t think Miller is representative of the level of knowledge and engagement of the Diaspora." n nBut they do, and he is. Sorry. n nThey have left of center loudmouth American Jews pegged. They know the majority will vote for the detested Obama, and therefore, are OK with the loudmouth leftist and multiculti Arab appeasers just as the so called 'moderate muslims' are OK with the Islamists. n nWhat else could they possibly think?
As far as I am concerned, any American Jew who engaged in Peace Processing' should be ashamed of themselves. n nAllowing themselves to be used as the Jewish face of American pressure. Disgusting. n nAnd to come out and denigrate an important segment of the Israeli population, because their politics do not coincide with his . . . in public . . . n nWhere does such self importance arrogance come from? n nDoes he not know what license this gives to Israel/Jew haters? n nHas he not turned himself into an enemy of the Jews, an apostate? n nOne would think, as a processor of the 'peace' that has murdered thousands, that perhaps those who have different ideas of how to mange Israel's affairs deserve a hearing, no? n nWords fail. n nWhat a failure as a Jew he is, and as a human being.
My sense of it is that these two crypto Nazis deserve each other and should be caged until one of them kills the other. For once, the survivor would both be able to blame the Jews for one death AND feel guilty it's not them who's dead AND BE RIGHT FOR ONCE.
The only problem here is the little fact that over 25% of "settlers" in Judea and Samaria are haredim – living in Beitar Elit, Imanuel and other places.
I don't know where your 25% figure comes from or whether it is accurate. But my sense is that haredim, like most Israelis who live outside the green line, do so more for economic than religious or ideological reasons. Not everyone who lives in the disputed territories is Gush Emunim or even Bnei Akiva.
Last time I checked about 50% of the 100 or so YESHA communities called themselves religious or mixed secular-religious.
I never spoke about the reasons why they live there. Regarding the figure I saw it a lot of times, don't remember the source but just add the population of hared yishuvim. Beitar Elit alone has 40,000 people.
Both Miller and Landau seem to ignore the faction that swings Israel's political compass to the nationalist right: the not-Haredi Israelis from the former Soviet Union, and the Israelis (and their progeny) who were forced to leave their homes in majority Islam countries. nMaybe time for all American Jews who are still deluded enough to believe in a two-state solution to stop throwing their words onto the op-ed pages of any newspaper.
Landau is, by the way, of Haredi origins and has a real soft spot for them. If anything, it makes one wonder if that's somehow complementary to his anti-Zionism.