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Israel News for September 11, 2015

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Iran and Russia
According to Israeli defense officials, hundreds of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have arrived in Syria over the last few days to help the Assad regime fight rebel forces. They’ll most likely deploy near the Lebanese border to assist Hezbollah fighters there. Russia already has military advisors and security forces operating in Syria, and is planning to bring in combat aircraft and helicopters.

Israel believes that the commander of the Revolutionary Guards met with Russian President Vladimir Putin last month in Moscow to coordinate military activities in Syria.

Upshot
Has Russia found, in Iran, its ideal partner to counter US influence in the Middle East? The possibilities are frightening. On the bright side, they’re both bent on destroying ISIS, and they’re the only ones who are willing to use ground troops to do so.

Discriminatory Labeling
The European Parliament passed a resolution calling on the European Union to issue labels for products imported to Europe from areas occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, including East Jerusalem, the Golan and the West Bank settlements.

The European Parliament motion also encouraged the EU to step up its role in promoting a peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, and emphasized that “only non-violent means and respect for human rights and humanitarian law can achieve a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.”

Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said that the EU motion was “discriminatory with a sharp smell of boycott,” and added that “under the guise of a technical step, this is an attempt to force a diplomatic solution instead of encouraging the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table. Europe is acting with hypocritical sanctimoniousness toward Israel when it does not consider proposing similar solutions to northern Cyprus or Western Sahara.”

PM Netanyahu has tried to block the implementation of the motion in private meetings with several European leaders including British Prime Minister David Cameron. In a statement the PM said, “The European Parliament decision is unjustified, it is just a perversion of justice and a distortion of reason, and I think that it also harms peace, it doesn’t advance it. The roots of the conflict are not territories and the roots of the conflict are not the settlements. We already have a historical memory as to what happened when Europe marked products of Jews.”

France Wants Jews
Last year 7,000 Jews emigrated from France to Israel. Another 8,000 are expected to leave this year. But the French want their Jews back.

According to a recent report in the Wall Street Journal, the French government is concerned that the large number of educated and professional Jews leaving the country is causing a brain drain. They’ve sent their economic minister, Emmanuel Macron, to Israel to try and convince French immigrants to return.

While anti-semitism is assumed to be the main reason for increased Aliyah, the weak French economy seems to be playing a significant role too. In any case, France’s loss is Israel’s gain.

Israeli Wealth
Forbes Magazine has released its list of the top 100 wealthiest people in Israel. Every one of them is a billionaire, in shekels ($1 = close to 4 Shekels). The aggregate wealth of the top 100 equals 500 billion shekels.

The top position on the list went to Patrick Drahi at 60 billion shekels. A distant second went to Eyal Ofer with 34.3 billion. It’s doubtful that anyone who made the list is complaining. Well, in Israel, you never know.

Mission Impossible Accomplished
A married woman left her abusive husband and fled to Israel. She wanted a divorce. But there was a problem: the woman fled from a Muslim country that has no diplomatic relations with Israel. The husband was still there.

It took five years, but due to the incredible efforts of a special unit of the Bet Din (rabbinical court) in Israel that deals with obtaining divorce documents in difficult situations, she has finally received her Get (divorce).

After long and difficult secret negotiations through intermediaries in a third country, the Bet Din sent in three undercover rabbinic emissaries to the Muslim country who obtained a signed document from the husband directing them to write and deliver the divorce document. They made it back to Israel, and the woman is now free to remarry.

Drivers Don’t Pray
The Rosh Yeshiva (dean) of the Ponevich Yeshiva in Bnei Brak, one of the most prestigious in the world, has ruled that students in the yeshiva who have a driver’s license will not be allocated a seat in the yeshiva for Rosh Hashanah prayers. In the past every student got a seat in the Yeshiva without exception.

The affected students received phone calls from the administration over the last few days informing them of their predicament. Most of them happen to be 25 yrs. or older, and they aren’t taking this sitting down (literally). They claim that it’s really not the Rosh Yeshiva but the gabbai (facilities manager, sort of) who is responsible for the ruling, because he needs more available seats. The students plan to ignore the order and come to services anyway. Should be a fun service.

Israel News for August 11, 2015

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Conversion Controversy
A group of prominent religious zionist rabbis have established a Bet Din (religious court) to perform conversions. They performed their first conversion on a group of minors on Monday. The Chief Rabbinate along with almost all charedi rabbis are vehemently against this court.

Background
The Chief Rabbinate has always had sole jurisdiction for all matters pertaining to marriage, divorce, death and conversions in the State of Israel. That means that only the courts established or sanctioned by the Chief Rabbinate can perform conversions. This wasn’t much of a problem until the 1990’s, when the Soviet Union collapsed and over a million Jews from behind the iron curtain immigrated to Israel. While they were considered eligible for the Right of Return by Israeli law simply by having a single Jewish grandparent, according to the Jewish religious law (halacha) that states that only the child of a Jewish mother is considered to be Jewish, at least a third of the immigrants weren’t technically Jewish.

Many of these “non Jewish“ Jews formally converted in the army via special army sanctioned religious courts or through the regular rabbinate court system. But when some leading rabbis noticed that these converts weren’t following Jewish law after their conversions, they sounded the alarm and pressured the charedi controlled Chief Rabbinate to prevent or even retract what they considered to be invalid conversions.

Most rabbis associated with the religious zionist camp disagreed with the Chief Rabbinate and felt that the Rabbinate had an obligation to allow these Israelis with Jewish fathers (but not mothers), many of whom were serving in the IDF and fully integrated into Israeli society, to convert and become officially recognized by the religious courts.

Conversion supporters attempted to pass a conversion reform bill in the Knesset which would have allowed the chief rabbis of every city and town to set up their own conversion courts. This would allow potential converts to use religious courts in cities with pro conversion chief rabbis. The bill passed initially, but was subsequently canceled just last month under pressure from the new government’s charedi coalition partners.

Fed up with the opposition of the Chief Rabbinate to easing their restrictions on conversion, the religious zionist rabbis, lead by many prominent rabbinic figures, have finally said enough is enough and have formed their own conversion court. The court is focusing primarily on converting minors who are already attending religious schools, which is permissible according to a great many prominent rabbinic experts (poskim).

Upshot
Even though they seem to have a solid basis in Jewish law, the new conversion court is vehemently opposed by the Chief Rabbinate, which is basically run by the charedi establishment. There doesn’t seem to be any way that the Chief Rabbinate and charedi rabbinic authorities will ever accept the new court and the conversions that they perform. On the other hand, there’s no way that the religious zionist rabbis can accept the stringent ruling of the Chief Rabbinate that they believe to be incorrect and harmful to Jewish continuity in Israel.

Since the Chief Rabbinate controls all marriage registration in the country, it is unlikely that these converts will be allowed to marry in the future, unless they change their position. The alternative would be for the religious zionist rabbis to overturn the Rabbinate’s authority and perform the marriages, which would likely spell the end of the Chief Rabbinate. This battle is just beginning to heat up and the religious status of thousands hang in the balance.

Force Feeding
Palestinian prisoner Mohammed Allaan, a member of Islamic Jihad who has been on a hunger strike for 54 days, was transferred yesterday under heavy security from Be’er Sheva’s Soroka Medical Center to Ashkelon’s Barzilai Medical Center. Apparently, doctors at Soroka, backed by the Israel Medical Association (IMA), have indicated that they will refuse to force-feed him against his will if ordered to do so. The IMA claims that force-feeding constitutes torture and treating a patient against his will violates medical ethics. It is known to be a highly invasive and painful process that can be life threatening if executed on a struggling patient.

Background
A hunger strike law was passed in the Knesset last week whereby the state can force-feed hunger strikers whose lives are in danger, even against their will. Although Allaan is currently in intensive care he is not thought to be in mortal danger, so doctors can still not force him to accept food or medical treatment. He would be the first prisoner to be force fed under the new law.

The US has force fed prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and the practice is legal in certain states.

Last year there were 724 prisoners that went on hunger strikes in Israel. This year there have been 30. Last month Israel freed another Islamic Jihad member after 56 days of hunger strike that nearly killed him.

Upshot
Doctors at Barzilai have also indicated that they will refuse an order to force- feed Allaan against his will, saying their ethical considerations are no different from those at Soroka and they will not force feed him as long as he is conscious. Looks like finding a hospital to carry out the law won’t be that easy.

Dog Walkers Attacked
A husband and wife from a settlement in Samaria took their dog out for a morning run. When they took a shortcut near a neighboring Arab village they were noticed by a few Arabs who quickly sounded the alarm. Suddenly, the couple found themselves confronted by about 20 men from the village accompanied by European activists with cameras. The Arabs started throwing rocks at the couple and shouted death threats.

The couple tried to explain that they were just out for a run and had no intentions of entering their village. It didn’t work. Luckily they were able to run away and alert the security forces, who then entered the village to search for the attackers. The couple weren’t harmed and will most likely be changing their jogging route. [source]

Violent Charedi Protests
There were violent demonstrations by charedim in the Mea Shearim neighborhood of Jerusalem yesterday protesting the arrest of a yeshiva student who hadn’t properly arranged his draft deferment and the attempt to forcibly draft a young woman from Elad who hadn’t bothered applying for a religious exemption. Demonstrators threw stones at police and at firefighters who arrived to extinguish burning garbage bins set on fire by the demonstrators. Three suspects were arrested for attacking policemen. It’s unclear what happened to the draft dodging yeshiva student, but there seem to be plenty of battle ready men among the demonstrators.