That’s right. The time has returned for Rabbis to lead the way in battle. That’s the way it was in the past and that’s how it should be today. Who’s better for the job – some bleeding-heart leftist commander who has too much compassion on the enemy and puts his Jewish soldiers in danger? The Rabbis know the nature of the Amalekites of our time, and understand that their evil darkness must be erased from the Earth, in order for the light of God to shine, as King David vowed, “I will pursue my enemies and come upon them, and not turn back until they are destroyed.”

We met the Amalekites in the Torah reading on Shabbat. As the newborn Nation of Israel starts its journey across the desert, Amalek attacks us out of pure hatred alone, not wanting the light of Israel to brighten the world. Moshe orders his top Torah student, Joshua, to lead the Jews into battle. Not only is Joshua the Torah genius of his generation, a round-the-clock student of Torah in Moshe’s tent, he is infused with a spirit of bravery and strength to defend the honor of the Hashem and his chosen Nation, Israel. Moshe stands on a peak overlooking the battleground and raises his hands toward the sky to remind the Israeli “Hesder” warriors to trust in Hashem, but in the midst of the fight, his arms become heavy, and Aharon and Hur must support them and keep them aloft.

Why did his hands become heavy? In punishment, as Rashi explains: “Because he was slothful in the commandment (of waging war himself) and he appointed another in his stead, so his hands became heavy.”

That’s right, my friends! Moshe Rabenu, the greatest Torah scholar of all time, the Chief Rabbi of Israel, was punished for not leading the very first Israel Defense Force battalion to war against the enemies of God!

I have more news for you, my good friends. Among the commandments of the Torah, there is a commandment to go to war against the enemies of Israel and Hashem, to defend Jewish life, and to conquer the Land of Israel and keep it under Israeli sovereignty. Faced with a war of this nature, called “Milchemet Mitzvah,” everyone goes forth to battle, including a groom from under the wedding canopy. Not only are Torah students and Rabbis included in this mitzvah, it was the great Torah giants of past, Moshe, Joshua, King David, and Rabbi Akiva, who led the way, as examples to everyone else.

Today, the Israel Defense Force is engaged in a Milchemet Mitzvah, in both of its aspects – protecting Jewish life from enemies who seek our destruction, and maintaining Israeli sovereignty over Eretz Yisrael. True, during intervals in the fight, everyone who isn’t needed at the front, goes back to learning Torah day and night, but when the battle is raging, everyone enlists. There are no exemptions.

With the formation of a new government in Israel frantically underway, political parties calling for everyone to share equally in the military burden has become the key issue. The time has come to cast off the distorted understanding of Judaism which pictures Talmidei Chachamin as weak and scrawny figures, bent over their Talmudic tomes, engaged only in spiritual pursuits, detached from their bodies and the world around them. This was appropriate during the exile in foreign lands when we were at the mercy of the goyim, without any national structure of our own, without our own Holy Land to defend, and without any arms to fight against our enemies. Today, all that has changed. With the return to our Land, the Milchemet Mitzvah of the Torah has returned in full force. Everyone is obligated to share in the battle!

Yes, the Israeli army must be made glatt kosher to meet the needs of religious soldiers. Yes, if the army can do without them, then deferrals must be granted to allow top Torah students to continue uninterrupted with their learning for six or eight years before they are drafted, because that is in the supreme defense of the Nation too. The Hesder yeshivot have proven that Torah scholars can be strong in learning and strong in battle. The Rabbis of the religious Zionist community serve in the army; why shouldn’t Haredi Rabbis also be brave examples for their students, just like Moshe, and Joshua, and King David, and lead the way in eradicating the enemies of who rise up against Israel – for the sake and betterment of humanity – that the light of true compassion and justice can shine in the world, through the annihilation of the evildoers who seek to prevent the word of God from being established on Earth.

Rabbis! Lead the way!

Profiling is a reality in Israel.Yes, we profile people as they quickly pass through checkpoints, malls, restaurants, even in the cars that pass us. After Arab tractor drivers began ramming their vehicles into buses and Israeli civilians, we began profiling the tractor drivers too. The profiling is done in seconds. The army  has its own rules and recommendations; bus passengers have theirs; we all do. What is the possibility that the person getting on the bus is going to blow it up – once that was a major issue; today, thanks to massive, on-going intelligence work, the Security Fence that separates Palestinians from Israelis, and vigilant guards, this thought is in our minds less and less – but it is still there.

Years ago, a woman was on a bus in Tel Aviv and an Arab got on the bus; everything inside of her said he was a terrorist. Without thinking, without hesitating, she got off the bus. Feeling silly because she would now need to wait for another bus to take her to work, she turned for a second and then heard a huge explosion – just one block away, the bus she’d been on had been attacked by the terrorist she correctly profiled.

I don’t know why I wrote all this – it isn’t the profiling I wanted to talk about – the one I wanted to write about is the profiling we do of our own sons as they enter the army. There is a concept in Judaism that we strive to be perfect, knowing we’ll never get there. God is perfect – the rest of us…we try to emulate God in all we do, knowing we’ll never succeed but will be rewarded for the effort.

I cringe when I hear parents say they have a perfect child – no child is perfect…nor is any human being. One of the things I love about Israel is the army rating system. They have to choose which sons can go into combat units and which ones cannot. They do this with a profile – a rating system. It ranges from down in the 20s (these will be given a deferral and not have to serve) up through the 70s where they participate in the army in non-combat roles. Somewhere in the low 70s, they are borderline combat and up on the 90s, it’s only a question of which unit, and their agreement.

The highest score is not 100 – that would mean perfection. I don’t know if it is true, but I heard once that they deduct 3 points from boys because they are circumcised and 3 points from girls because they have a menstrual cycle. It isn’t that either of these are bad (in fact, they are very good), but it’s as good a reason as any…and so, the top score you can get is 97.

Davidi came to my office a while ago – I was so glad to see him. I didn’t realize how much I wanted/needed to see him until he came in – just as I was finishing a class. “97″ he told me and I remembered how Elie and Shmulik had told me the same. It’s a blessing, that high score…a blessing…and a bit of a curse. The first thing the army thinks of with a 97 is – here’s a combat soldier, where should we put them.

What’s nice is that they ask. There’s no use forcing a boy into a combat unit if they aren’t willing to make the commitment. There is a discipline he must follow; a way of life he must learn. With that simple question, he is agreeing to follow orders, to sleep when he is told to sleep, to use the allocated amount of time to do each task. He’s committing to three months of basic training, perhaps more and then more training, and then more. Davidi told them he agreed to go into a combat unit. He told them he wants to be a paramedic.

He didn’t tell them that I want him to go into Artillery – where you fight …. so many kilometers behind the front lines. He didn’t tell them that I’m holding on, not wanting him to rush into what he will do and where he will go. The boy returned to me today – he played on the computer in my office and told me he was hungry.

We laughed about some of the things – the computer test, the medical parts, and the physical examination. He turned a bright shade of red when I joked about the 97, “how do they know? Do they check?”

And he answered, “yes” as he looked towards the front of my office to make sure our secretary couldn’t hear the conversation.

I had no idea the physical examination was…so physical and yes, he was circumcised when he was 8 days old, as is our tradition. He was given the name of his grandfather who had died almost exactly a year before Davidi was born. His grandfather was a Holocaust survivor, whose grandsons will be fighters in the army of Israel. David Levi couldn’t raise a weapon to the Nazis, though he fought back in so many little ways.

I can’t help but believe he is watching my Davidi from the heavens and I know he would be so proud of this so-tall, so-beautiful boy.

Today, my son was profiled. 97….

May God watch over my son, my sons, all the soldiers of Israel and may they be protected, with the names and in the names of their grandfathers.

Visit A Soldier’s Mother.

Last night, at the very end of my day – already close to midnight, I headed home, stopping by my daughter’s house to pick up the car seat for the baby. There in the quiet of the middle of the night, knowing I’d have to be up in six hours, I had a short talk with my son-in-law. He is a very special person in so many ways, more than I could ever explain without my eyes filling with tears. I’m so blessed to have him – well yes, my daughter has him, but he has her and together, they have each other. For a mother to see that…is beyond words. After two years, he finishes the army this week, returns his uniform and will be free to do what he wants, when he wants. It hasn’t sunk in yet, he told me.

I told him that it was good he had served and how it is good for a son to have a father who has gone through the army. Elie didn’t have that – what he brought to us, the stories, the process, the problems – were all new. My husband listened but couldn’t offer his own opinions, advice, army stories of his own. Each thing that happened to Elie was a discovery for us, an unknown, a path never traveled by any of us. It was easier for Shmulik and Chaim because they had Elie to guide them, advise them. Where a parent might call a commanding officer, Elie has taken that role if it was needed; Elie answers the questions, explains.

So when my grandson gets to that age, I said, if he serves in the army, Haim will be able to guide him, to share from the side of knowing. Haim is happy he served, enriched in many ways by the experience. There is a lot that is good about the army, he told me, but he looked down and around when I mentioned his son serving. It is years and years away – his son, my amazingly special grandson, is just a baby.

When you get to be my age, you understand how fast time goes – when your first is just a young toddler, it seems the future is ages away. And then Haim told me something I had forgotten, something friends of mine had told me when their son went into the army.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” my friend said. “We served so that he wouldn’t have to.”

My son-in-law wants to believe in a future in which there will be peace and no reason for his toddler to ever grow into a soldier. He served so that his son wouldn’t have to. I’d forgotten that. My son-in-law needs to believe that there will be no need for soldiers in another 18 or so years. Deep down, I want to believe that too, but there is this massive wall inside me that doesn’t believe.

Visit A Soldier’s Mother.

Following harsh criticism from both the Likud and the Left, Naftali Bennett, head of the Bayit Hayehudi party, went on offensive against the attacks on his statements regarding his personal inability to expel Jews from their homes in the case of another “Disengagement”.

Bennett said that he is not calling on soldiers to refuse orders, which he also clearly said in his original remarks.

He said that, as a soldier, he personally would be incapable of fulfilling an order to uproot a Jewish settlement or an Arab village.

On Channel 10, Bennett then went on the offensive against the Likud and Netanyahu.

Bennett said that the fact that the question even arises on election eve as to whether or not the Likud would have soldiers, once again, expel Jews from their homes, says it all. And the Likud would do it, he claims.

In response to Netanyahu’s statement, “Whoever refuses orders to remove settlements will not be in my government,” Bennett responded, “Mr. Prime Minister, is the reason you said that because you are planning on removing settlements in your next administration?”

A number of Likud ministers and MKs have attacked Bennett, but with the exception of Moshe Feiglin, none have yet said they would not expel Jews if given the order to do so.

The Likud sees HaBayit HaYehudi as their biggest threat in the upcoming elections.

It’s easy to see why.

The original interview:

Saturday night’s followup:

Moshe Feiglin on Bennett and refusing orders:

Once upon a time in America, there was a military draft. That meant that every single able bodied young man in America was required to serve in the army. Reaching the age of 18, they would have to register with a draft board and get a draft card.

I remember that period very well. When I was 18 the draft was in full force. So was the Viet Nam War. And both stayed that way until the end of the Viet Nam War. After which President Richard M. Nixon abolished the draft in America. That is how things stand now. This – the greatest and most powerful nation on the face of the earth is protected by an army of volunteer soldiers.

But ‘back in the day’ I was indeed subject to be drafted into the army and sent to Viet Nam to flight in what many of us (including my Rebbe Rav Ahron Soloveichik) called an immoral war. All was not lost however. There were ways to get out of it legally. Although there were many young Americans who resisted the draft in an assortment of illegal ways (like surreptitiously crossing the border into Canada) there were quite a few legal ways to get out of serving in Viet Nam. One way was by joining the US Coast Guard for example. One could also get a deferment and finish his education.

We Yeshiva students had the best ‘gig’ of all. The Selective Service Act (the draft) provided complete exemptions for divinity students. That meant that as long as someone was studying in a Yeshiva or Seminary they were exempt from serving in the army. In fact all clergy (priests, ministers, and rabbis) were exempt – as were those of studying for those positions. It was called a 4-D exemption.

Yeshivos all over the country were packed with students who otherwise might not have been there. The beauty for those who were there for purposes of dodging the draft was that the Yeshivos allowed them to attend college towards their original goals of seeking a career -and still be a member in good standing at the yeshiva.

I mention all of this in light of the continuing story about drafting Charedim into the Israeli army. The rabbinic leadership is resisting this full force. One of the arguments they put forward is that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) doesn’t really need them. That those who serve now are more than enough. That drafting Yeshiva students is simply a ploy to destroy the Torah World. From an article in YWN, here is how Agudat Israel party member Rabbi Meir Porush put it:

[W]e are dealing with (the holy of holies of the people of Israel),” the destruction of yeshivos R”L, the government permits itself to publically declare the draft of bnei yeshivos is a matter of a few months

Porush added the state did not even bother to explain to the court that in actuality, the IDF cannot compel the avreichim to serve for in reality; they will prefer to fill the nation’s prisons before agreeing to abandon the benches of beis medrash

Porush condemned the prime minister’s “immoral position”, for he feels that without the frum community Mr. Netanyahu would not have been elected yet now, he turns his back on this very same tzibur. Porush adds the Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will become the first prime minister in the state’s history who rejects the study of Torah as the “profession” of the avreichim and therefore, is working to compel their draft into military service.

Porush explains the actions of the administration is tantamount to a declaration of war against the chareidi tzibur and on this matter there cannot and will not be the slightest compromise towards accommodating the position of the government.

How odd. From my perspective it is Rav Porush’s attitude that is wrong – and perhaps even immoral. Prisons?! It is better for Yeshiva students to sit in jail than to serve their country?! He uses hyperbole and exaggeration to make his points and concludes that the Israeli government has declared this a war against Charedim?! And he says that Prime Minister Netanyhau is immoral?!

First of all let me explode that myth. There is a sizable minority that is willing to comply wit the draft. According to an article in Ynet, 66% percent of Charedim believe Yeshiva students should be exempt from the draft. That means 34% of Charedim think that Yeshiva students should serve in the IDF. So much for declaring a war on Charedim.

What makes Rav Porush’s postion immoral for me is the gross inequity of exempting only Yeshiva students. The claim that they are not needed is nothing more than spin. What he means of course is that there are enough secular and Dati Leumi (MO) IDF members so that it is unnecessary to draft Yeshiva students.

That is ridiculous. The way the draft should work is that every single young man no matter what strata of Israeli society he comes from has an equal chance of being drafted. Sure – the way things have been structured until now required the government of Israel to fill its quota only with secular and Dati Leumi Jews.

But in an ideal and equitable world that should have never happened. Every single able bodied young man should register with a draft board. Why should only secular and Dati -Religious Zionist boys be put in harm’s way? Is Charedi blood redder? Is secular and Dati Leumi blood cheaper? The system is unfair from the get go. That Charedi Yeshiva students have all been exempt until now doesn’t mean that this unfair paradigm should continue.

This is why the government has changed the law and has made everyone subject to the draft. It is about fairness and has nothing to do with being anti Torah!

What about a divinity exemptions – like the one that existed in my day in America? Yes. I think there should be some Yeshiva students that are exempt… as there should be students of other disciplines that are vital to Israel’s existence. But it can’t be full exemptions to every single Yeshiva student as was the case in the America of my day.

There are 2 major differences between America and Israel. One is that Israel is and has been under constant siege from the very first day of its existence. It is under direct deadly conflict with its neighbors who threaten to annihilate it daily. The other is that its population is too small to allow that many exemptions. Especially to only one segment. America – even at the height of the Viet Nam War was huge! …and easily could fulfill its draft quota.

That said, I suppose that a fair and equitable draft in America should have included Yeshiva students too. Perhaps. But the Viet Nam War was not a popular war. It was not a war for survival. There were very few young people who supported that war. And no one clamored that this exemption wasn’t fair. It was widely accepted and respected.

Israel simply does not have enough manpower for the luxury of mass exemptions. Especially when there are so many young soldiers that have given up life and limb for their country. Israel is in a war for survival. Unlike America of the Viet Nam Wra era – popular opinion in Israel today is on the side of military service.

Charedi Rabbanim counter that it is the Torah study of Yeshivos that actually protects the country. I do not argue the point. The importance of the spiritual army does not however preclude the need of a physical army with a fair and equitable draft.

I think it is a gross misrepresentation for Rabbi Porush and other Charedi Rabbonim to suggest that the motive of the Israeli government is tantamount to declaring war on the Torah. Are Hesder boys also part of that war? This is not about fighting Torah. This is about fairness.

With 34% of the Charedi world agreeing that Yeshiva Bachurim should not be exempt, I’m sure that the government of Israel can devise a way for an equitable solution to this problem. There are over 60,000 students studying in Yeshivos and Kollelim. The better students can remain with their “4D” exemption. 66% of them. 34% can voluntarily subject themselves to the draft. That’s over 20,000 new Charedi recruits. That – at the very least – is the right thing to do.

Visit Emes Ve-Emunah.

Originally published at Rubin Reports.

What’s been happening in Egypt this week is as important as the revolution that overthrew the old regime almost two years ago. A new dictator has arrived and while the Muslim Brotherhood’s overturning of democracy was totally predictable, Western policymakers walked right into the trap. They even helped build it.

President Mursi has now declared his ability to rule by decree. The key concept is that he can do everything to protect the revolution. In doing so, he is defining the revolution—as the Iranian revolution of 1978-1979 which was made by a broad coalition of forces soon after became defined—as an Islamist revolution.

One could call the Islamist strategy a short march through the institutions. Once Islamists take power—in Iran, the Gaza Strip, and Turkey, perhaps, too Syria—that is only the beginning of the story. They systematically do a fundamental transformation of them.

The media, or at least a large part of it, is tamed. The draft constitution written by the Brotherhood and Salafists allows the government to shut down any newspaper or television station by decree. The courts are made impotent and judges are replaced. Mursi’s decree said he could ignore any court decision.At a November 18 press conference, a few days before Mursi issued his decree, the leading secular-oriented representatives in the constitution-writing constituent assembly resigned, charging the new document would enshrine Sharia law. The problem was not the statement in Article 2 about Sharia being the main source of Egyptian legislation but rather later provisions making it clear that Islamist-controlled institutions would interpret precisely what that meant. Amr Moussa, former foreign minister and Arab League secretary-general, said the new constitution would bring disaster for Egypt. Abdel Meguid called this combination “Taliban-like.”

Scattered secularist forces, Coptic Christians, liberals or the remnants of the old regime, and modern-minded women do not pose a real threat to the regime. They are not violent, not organized, and not flush with cash. They can expect no material international support. There will be no civil war between the moderates and the Islamists the suppression of one by the other. The Salafists are itching for confrontation; the Muslim Brotherhood is patient. But when Salafists harass women or stab secularists or attack churches, the Brotherhood-controlled government will do nothing to protect the victims.

Of critical importance for Egypt is control over the religious infrastructure: the ministry of Waqf that supervises huge amounts of money in Islamic foundations; the office of qadi, the chief Islamist jurist; al-Azhar University, the most important institution defining Islam in the Muslim world; which clerics get to go on television or have their own shows; and down to appointments of preachers in every public mosque in the country.

Many clerics are not moderate but most are not systematic Islamists. Soon they will be or at least talk as if they were. Revolutionary Islamism will become in Egypt merely normative Islam. Thus is the endless debate in the West about the nature of Islam—religion of peace or religion of terrorism?–short-circuited and made even more irrelevant. The real power is not what the texts say but who interprets them. And the Islamists will do the interpreting.

While the judges are still holding out bravely only the army has real power to counter the Islamist revolution transforming the most important country in the Arabic-speaking world into the instrument of the leading international anti-Western, anti-American, and antisemitic organization. It doesn’t matter how nicely Mursi spoke to Obama any more than say how Lenin–who moderated Soviet policy in the 1920s to consolidate the regime and get Western help–did in his day.

What is going on inside Egypt’s army, the last remaining institution that could offer resistance? We don’t really know but there are certainly some important indications. In theory, the army is the only force that can challenge the Muslim Brotherhood’s drive to transform Egypt into an Islamist state. But why should we believe the officers want to engage in such a battle?

Under the leadership of a secret society called the Free Officers, Egypt’s army overturned the monarchy in 1952 in a virtually bloodless coup. Yet while Egypt was for decades thereafter ruled by the resulting regime, the military government soon became a military-backed government. Officers either moved over to civilian offices or if they opposed the regime were purged.

According to a report by Ynet, seven people, including five soldiers, were injured  in a rocket attack on the Eshkol Regional Council on Wednesday afternoon.  One soldier , an officer in the army reserves, was critically injured, and the others were hurt lightly to moderately.

The fact that the casualty toll from the first days of the Gaza fighting was three Israelis and 30 Arabs “underscores what critics of Israeli policy called Israel’s disproportionate use of military force,” The New York Times reported on Nov. 17.

If the body count determines whether an army’s actions are justified, then the historical record contains more than a few surprises.

In early 1916, Pancho Villa’s revolutionaries murdered 16 Americans in northern Mexico, and then 18 more in a cross-border raid into New Mexico. President Woodrow Wilson responded by sending American troops, led by Major-General John Pershing, after Villa. In a series of battles between March and June, the Americans lost 15 men, while Villa’s forces suffered about 200 dead.

Did anybody accuse Pershing of using too much force?

Fast forward 25 years. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, left 2,330 Americans dead. The United States responded not with a raid of similar size, but a full-scale war against the Japanese throughout the Pacific, culminating in the dropping of atomic bombs on the Japanese mainland. By the time the war was over, Japan had lost an estimated one million soldiers and two million civilians, including the approximately 200,000 civilians killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Was America’s response disproportionate?

President Harry Truman didn’t think so. Here’s what he said about using a nuclear weapon: “We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans.”

The German blitzkrieg rained terror on London and other British cities every night for eight straight months from September 1940 to May 1941. About 40,000 British civilians were killed in those German bombings.

But in just three nights, the Allied bombing of the German city of Dresden claimed an estimated 20,000 lives. Other Allied bombings of Germany brought the civilian death toll there to far more than what the British had suffered.

The chief marshal of the British air force, Arthur Harris, had this to say about Dresden: “Attacks on cities, like any other act of war, are intolerable unless they are strategically justified. But they are strategically justified insofar as they tend to shorten the war and preserve the lives of Allied soldiers. To my mind we have absolutely no right to give them up unless it is certain that they will not have this effect. I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British Grenadier.”

Altogether, an estimated 3.2 million German soldiers, and 3.6 million German civilians, died in the war. Compare that to American and British losses. The U.S. suffered 362,561 military deaths in World War II. The British lost 264,433 soldiers, 30,248 merchant navymen, and 60,595 civilians, for a total of 355,276.

By the standards of today’s Mideast pundits, would that mean the Allies’ military actions were disproportionate?

More recent conflicts raise similar questions.

The Korean War, for example. Casualty figures are impossible to determine precisely, but there is no doubt that the North Koreans and their Chinese allies suffered many more losses than the U.S. and South Korea.

The U.S. lost 36,576 soldiers; the South Koreans more than 100,000 soldiers and some 300,000 civilians. By contrast, North Korean military losses were probably around 400,000, and Chinese fatalities were probably in the vicinity of 500,000. Together with North Korean civilian deaths, the casualty total on their side was well over one million. Does that indicate the Americans used disproportionate force?

In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. The U.S. and its allies came to Kuwait’s defense. About 25,000 Iraqi soldiers and more than 3,000 Iraqi civilians were killed. The U.S. suffered 294 losses; the other members of its coalition lost a combined total of 188. Did the Americans overdo it?

Consider Afghanistan. About 3,000 Americans were killed in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The U.S. and its allies responded by attacking Al Qaeda and its Taliban supporters in Afghanistan. As of this writing, more than 2,000 American soldiers, and more than 1,000 other allied soldiers, have died in Afghanistan, as well as some 10,000 Afghan soldiers. Estimates for Al Qaeda and Taliban casualty totals vary, but they certainly number in the tens of thousands – far more than the Americans and their allies. Should we conclude that the Bush and Obama administrations have used disproportionate force in Afghanistan?