“The Victory of the Maccabees was the Jewish People’s Greatest Failure!”
“Because of that Victory, We Remained with Our Outdated Religion, Disconnected from the Advanced Civilization of Ancient Greece.
“If not for that Unfortunate Maccabee Victory, We Would have been Spared Everything that Happened to Us in Our Long Exile, and We Would Today be a Happy Normal Nation, Living as Part of the Family of Nations.”
–Yosef “Tommy” Lapid, former Israeli radio and television journalist and former head of the Shinui (Jewish Transformation) Party
(Paraphrased by Rabbi Moshe Grylak in Mishpacha Magazine, November 27, 2013)
These were the sentiments of the now-deceased Yosef “Tommy” Lapid.
Do you agree with those sentiments?–I certainly don’t!
But his son, Yair Lapid does agree–And it matters.
Yair is head of the new “Yesh Atid” (Hope for the Future) political party and Minister of Finance in the current Netanyahu coalition government. Yesh Atid, together with Naftali Bennett’s “Habayit HaYehudi” (Jewish Home) Party now control Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition.
Yair was a television journalist before he entered politics, so he is much smoother, much more subtle and sophisticated than his gadfly father was. But, notwithstanding his softer, more nuanced approach, Yair completely agrees with the above-quoted sentiments of his now-deceased father.
Lapid: “Hareidi Parasites” in the Land of Israel
Like his father, Lapid believed that the Hareidim, together with the Palestinians, are parasites, eating away at the substance of the Nation. They contribute nothing to the economy, nothing to defense; their demands are unceasing.
They refuse to integrate into the secular mainstream, to take their place as modern productive citizens.
So, Lapid insists that If the Hareidim won’t do so voluntarily, we, the enlightened secular elite must do everything we can to drag them into the twenty-first century.
- If that means laying siege to the Hareidi community by taking away their existing means of support, so be it.
- If that means arresting Yeshiva and Kollel students who insist on learning Torah and refuse to join the IDF, so be it.
- If that means cutting aid to all Hareidi-affiliated educational institutions, so be it.
- If that means denying tax exemptions to Hareidi-affiliated charitable institutions, so be it.
- If that means denying mortgage subsidies to Hareidi homeowners, so be it.
- If that means starvation diets for Hareidi children, so be it.