Re: Nate Friedman versus fake protestors

On 2025-05-28 3:46 PM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:
 

. . .

 

One of the women interviewed by Nate Friedman - she was Jewish and
carried a sign supporting the protesters and got interviewed toward the
end - identified herself as belonging to a group of American Jews that
called for an end to the attacks on Gaza. I'd heard of this group before
for similar actions but I'm blanking on the name of the group right now
and can't spare another 40 minutes to watch the video again. I imagine
you know which group I mean.

 There are multiple groups, and yeah, they all deliberately mischaracterize
the war as an attack on Gaza and the deaths (combined of militant and
civilian deaths) as a genocide. They barely criticize Hamas at all. Even
if the current phase of the war is too punitive, seemingly without
military objective, they have never called for release of all living
hostages and unconditional surrender of Hamas. Israel would immediately
stop shelling if that were to happen.
 In the United States, I've heard of no group offering a practical
position that would lead to an end to war without continuing shellings
in which civilians are killed. It's always, Israel must back off without
Hamas needing to surrender.
 

Douglas Murray puts it in a nice simple way: whenever there is a war with Hamas, Hizbollah, or whoever, Israel is never allowed to win. It always has to back off due to foreign pressure with the enemy undefeated so that there antagonist is allowed to regroup and rebuild and launch another attack in a few years. That is a ludicrous proposition. It seems like the Israeli leadership is finally resolved not to do that any more and taking one enemy off the board entirely, namely the Hamas leadership (and hopefully popular support for Hamas although that's probably too much to hope for).

I've also heard people like Douglas Murray and Melanie Phillips stating
their opposition to certain Israeli Jews that seemed more than a little
sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and their aspirations. . . .

 Ok. There may be a few that reject reality.
 

One question about the religious Jews. Didn't the Knesset vote to end
the exemption of religious Jews from the IDF around a year ago?

 I should have been clearer. The religious parties are for Jews who live
separately from society, like Hassids. There isn't a political party for
Jews who more or less strictly practice religion.
 

Isn't the party that Smotrich and Ben Gvir belong to for the strictly religious?

The exemption is specific to rabbinical students, not all religious
Jews.

Yes, those are the ones I meant, the ones that spend years at yeshivas learning more about Judaism. I over-generalized by referring to religious Jews in general.
  There are numerous religious Jews in the army.

 It's not being enforced as far as I understand, and there have been
court cases. I don't know what the final outcome will be.
>

I hadn't heard of any major unrest from the rabbinical students so I wondered if they had had a change of heart or the people who expected trouble were just flat out wrong.

I seem to remember seeing that in the news. It was supposed to come
into effect within a few days and they were anticipating significant
resistance from the religious Jews. But then I never heard about any
resistance so I'm wondering if the government backed away from that? Or
did the religious Jews (Haredi? Or am I misusing that term?) have a change
of heart and turn up at the IDF ready to begin training without protest?

 Haredim is an Orthodox branch that rejects modernity in living according
to religious law. Orthodox Judaism has an enormous variety of beliefs,
whereas Reform and Conservative (an American movement) have relatively
uniform beliefs. Plenty of Orthodox Jews attempt to accomodate the
modern world while living within religious law. They don't try to live
separately from the modern world.

Sorry, I got my terminology muddled. I was trying to think of the term for the yeshiva students who had previously been exempt from military service (a policy I know MOST Israelis disagree with) and landed on Haredi by mistake. The Haredi are the people who mostly live in a cluster in NYC with a wire encircling their area.(And, of course, they live in other cities and countries as well.)
--
Rhino