Here’s a photo from this evening of Rabbi Moshe Hillel Hirsch, the co-leader of the Lithuanian charedi world. He was speaking at an event organized by Ateres Shlomo, a prestigious yeshiva famous for its $8 million dollar Aron HaKodesh, and which doubtless receives enormous amounts of government funding. But he was not speaking at the yeshivah. He was speaking outside an Israeli prison, on behalf of a student from Ateres Shlomo who was arrested for draft-dodging.
The protest rally was attended by a huge crowd of yeshiva students, who chanted “We do not believe in the rule of heretics!” (Meanwhile, other charedi yeshiva students blocked roads around the country.) In front of R. Hirsch, to his right, you can see the corner of a poster that the yeshiva produced. Here’s a full picture of it:
See the bottom left? There’s the yellow ribbon that was the symbol of those held hostage by Hamas. And the Hebrew words next to it use the phrase coined by those who campaigned on behalf of the hostages: “Until the last hostage.”
It’s simply vile. But more than that; it demonstrates how completely detached the charedi world is from the rest of the Jewish People. Aside from completely not caring to help with the war and to relieve the burden on the reservists, they have so little regard for the terrible situation of the hostages that they think it’s fine to put their arrested yeshiva student in the same category. And they have so little care for the rest of the Jewish People that they see nothing wrong in using the most offensive analogy.
Here’s the response put out by the Organization of Families for the Return of the Hostages:
The organization views with great severity the cynical and sickening use of imitating the symbol of the hostages as part of the protest against the Haredi draft.
This design, born out of the unimaginable pain of families waiting for their loved ones in captivity, is not a propaganda toy or a media gimmick.
Anyone who appropriates this symbol for political purposes denigrates the memory of the murdered, harms the abductees who are still being held in Gaza, and is increasing the pain of their families.
The organization demands that advertisers immediately remove the derogatory publications and cease the sickening use of the image, which has become a symbol of national trauma and is not one of political struggle.
These people not only do not fulfill their civic duties to the nation, they not only do not care in the slightest about the increased burden that they create for others - they don’t even care about the pain they cause to the families of the hostages.
What do we think of such people who are so proud of their avoiding their civic duties, and so uncaring for the hardships suffered by so many others? The Likud MK that Bibi appointed to legislate mass army exemptions for them, Boaz Bismuth, declared on television yesterday that he values charedi yeshiva students who don’t serve just as much as he values those Israelis who serve.
I always thought that the Judaism that Likud values is Religious Zionist Judaism that contributes to the nation, not anti-Zionist charedi Judaism that doesn’t care about the nation. Evidently I was wrong.
This is vile but not surprising. Remember when they dressed up in the pajamas from the death camps? There seems to be no low in which they will not stoop. Funny how they have no problem taking the free money they get from the ‘heretic’ government they detest so much. I saw the news yesterday that the draft law was yet again put on hold. Outrageous and just as outrageous is certain tone deaf people in the Knesset inviting thug and law breaker to Israel and treating him as some kind of hero and naive individuals falling for his rubbish. I was monitoring him in the 1990s and afterwards. He’s now claiming the BNP was a ‘patriotic’ movement! He was a neo-Nazi and he’s a racist. He’s using us and many people are falling for it. Makes me sick. This government needs to go. Israel needs to new leadership and people that don’t bend to the Charedi or invite racists like Tommy Robinson and give a platform!
YK thank you for your important work.