The special sensitivity that Religious Zionism has for the term Klal Yisrael is interpreted as weakness that can be well exploited to good effect in order to undermine the right-wing government and topple it, contrary to the will of the voter as expressed at the ballot box.
The special characteristics of Religious Zionism are being exploited by powerful, influential, and wealthy forces to deepen an internal political rift within the camp of the religious-right.
One encounters this phenomenon in the most burning issues on the Israeli agenda, primary among them the issue of drafting the Haredim and the issue of returning the hostages. In both of these, those promoting the fall of the government operate in the same way, and by employing pan-Israeli values that touch upon the raw nerves of the Religious Zionist community.
The media is mobilized in full force to achieve this objective, as well as public campaigns in the streets, on billboards, and in well-prepared and polished advertisements.
It appears that no one is seeking to conceal this any longer. Nevertheless, many in the Religious Zionist camp fall into the same trap with their eyes wide open because of their great love of Israel.
We will first address the campaign to recruit Haredi youth:
This is a campaign that, ostensibly is justified and needed, from the Jewish-Torah perspective, the equality-moral perspective, and the simple perspective of the burden of hundreds of days of reserve duty that leave their harsh, searing marks on family life, education of the children, livelihood, and a long list of other parameters. This is even before mentioning the heavy price of the wounded and fallen of the best of the children of the Religious Zionist movement in battle. Not only them, of course, but in this context, we will mention them specifically.
Despite the clamorous demand for justice, we must open our eyes and identify the hand that rocks the cradle of the outcry. Eyal Naveh, one of the heads of “Brothers in Arms,” told senior journalist Nahum Barnea that his movement reached the conclusion that demonstrations, protests and obstructing traffic would not yield the desired result and would not engender the collapse of the government. Upon further reflection, they identified what they considered to be the weak link, the Religious Zionist community and the burden it bears in the war, as an opportunity to incite it against its coalition partners, the Haredi parties, on the basis of “sharing the burden”.
As a result, Naveh explained, they would achieve their political goal in the form of toppling the right-wing government.
Moti Ashkenazi, one of the leaders of the protest movement against the government, in his speech before the protest demonstrators, also identified the Religious Zionist women as the weak point of the government, and proclaimed that in order to defeat the government politically, this weak point must be exploited as part of a structured strategic program.
It appears that the program is succeeding. Women from the heart of the Religious Zionist community, wives of yeshiva students, rabbis, and senior figures in the Religious Zionist educational system have raised their just voices and demanded the immediate conscription of the youth of the Haredi community. Their intentions are undoubtedly pure, but it is not certain what the intentions are of those who have generated this storm.
Were there a genuine concern for expanding the ranks of the army, the focus would not be only on the Haredi community, but also on other communities. This is not happening because the objective is otherwise, and it has been clearly and articulately defined by Eyal Naveh and Moti Ashkenazi.
From here, transitioning to the painful issue that pierces every Jewish heart:
The issue of the hostages:
We are being inundated these days with public appeals, articles, editorials, rallies, interviews, and more, all of which share the same headline, the self-flagellation of the Religious Zionism over the fact that it is not sufficiently involved in the struggle to return the hostages.
In the name of this claim, the orchestrated forces behind this course of action have successfully located and amplified voices from within the ranks of the Religious Zionism, harshly attacking the political leadership of the Religious Zionism, as well as the leadership of the coalition of the religious-right wing bloc as though it were insensitive and indifferent to the distress of the families of the hostages.
Moreover, there is the even more serious charge that the political leadership does not want the return of the hostages at all, preferring that the war continue indefinitely, as though it was a bloodthirsty jihadist band.
The fact that the ranks of the combat soldiers are filled with the children of Religious Zionism who are entering the battle deep in the Gaza Strip with the objective of returning the hostages, as well as the fact of the hundreds of days of reserve duty served by members of Religious Zionism, facts that a moment ago were employed by those promoting the campaign to draft the Haredim, all this to bring back every male and female hostage, all these are insignificant, even if they involve a heavy price of casualties, wounded and dead, and families that are collapsing.
As long as you are not demonstrating in Kaplan Square and other squares against the government, you have done nothing on behalf of the hostages; this is the tacit message that has been conveyed to the ranks of Religious Zionism.
The claim that it is davka the demonstrations that raise the price of freeing the hostages and that they play into the hands of Hamas, a claim that has been proven in various ways, also does not convince the demonstrators of the religious Zionist persuasion. The demand from the Religious Zionists is to prove their loyalty to the hostages and there is only one way to do so, by waging a blatant and acrimonious struggle against the government.
Many in the Religious Zionist camp, motivated by the same warm heart and love of Israel, by the same yearning for unity, by the same desire to join together with the entire Jewish people, reconcile themselves with this demand, join the demonstrators, and receive widespread media coverage.
On the other side, voices are already being heard that sound quite a bit like the campaign to draft the Haredim. These voices speak openly of what they perceive as a gap between the Religious Zionist public and its political leaders. The public, they say, wants the return of the hostages, but the government does not, and this warm embracing compliment of the Religious Zionist public is well received. Here, too, the objective is achieved of splitting and dividing the right-wing camp, the government camp, to disconnect the elected officials from their voters after creating a schism between the parties of the right-wing camp.
Our friends and brethren in Religious Zionism: those who now embrace you in the hope of drawing you into a loving embrace, will kick you out the moment they succeed in their mission and the government falls. Open your eyes and identify that they are exploiting you to achieve their political ends.
Let us continue to work to enlist ever more segments of Israeli society, let us continue to work in every effective and legitimate way on behalf of the return of the hostages, but in a manner that we do not find ourselves standing in the corner watching a left-wing and Arab government established, heaven forbid, on the ruins of the right-wing government, that will trample all the sacred cows of the Religious Zionist movement, rending chunks from the Land of Israel, and returning us all to the days that it seemed that we had moved beyond them and their consequences.
