Dick Hubert’s Worldview: Threats to Israeli and Jewish life that are internal, not external

Could the biggest threat to Israel’s future be not Hamas and its terrorist allies, but an ugly split in Israeli society?

Are the American media and the Jewish community in this area uncomfortable looking at the same forces threatening Israel internally that are mirrored here?

Two major stories in our mainstream media prompt these questions.

The Economist, News12,
and no one else

The Economist, the famed international weekly news magazine edited in London, had a report in its United States section Mar. 14 about a revolt by women in Rockland County’s ultra-Orthodox Kiryas Joel community. Headlined “Ultra-Orthodox Jewish women are staging a sex strike,” the article in The Economist went on to detail how “800 women refused to sleep with their husbands last Friday night, a time when intimacy is considered especially holy. More have since joined the cause. Unlike the Greeks they are not protesting against war but rather a religious system in which men can shackle women to unwanted marriages.”

If you never heard of this incident until now, you have lots of company. No Greater New York City media covered this story (including Gannett’s Journal News, which has a team covering Rockland County) with the exception of Cablevision’s News12.

Their brief report can still be found on their website.

A Google search will show that the Kiryas Joel protest was even noted in an Israeli newspaper, but not a single entity besides News12 covered it in the U.S. Worse yet, the Google link to the News12 story had, in my search, been disabled. I was only able to find it in the News12 search engine by entering key words several times in separate searches until the video popped up.

Why the media silence, you might ask? I asked that question of the executive editor of The Journal News in an e-mail dated Mar. 20. I have yet to get a response.

The New York Times
and the ultra-Orthodox in Israel

Here’s an excerpt from the New York Times of Mar. 30, with this headline and initial paragraphs, that lays out in the clearest and strongest language how the conflict between ultra-Orthodox and secular Jews is threatening the future of Israel:

Dispute Over Conscription for Ultra-Orthodox Jews Presents New Threat to Netanyahu

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing his most challenging political threat since the start of the Gaza war because of a disagreement among members of his coalition about whether ultra-Orthodox Jews should retain their longstanding exemption from military service.

“An unwieldy right-wing alliance of secular and ultra-Orthodox lawmakers, the coalition’s members are divided about whether the state should continue to allow young ultra-Orthodox men to study at religious seminaries instead of serving in the military, as most other Jewish Israelis do. If the government abolishes the exemption, it risks a walkout from the ultra-Orthodox lawmakers; if it lets the exemption stand, the secular members could withdraw. Either way, the coalition could collapse.”

By the time you read this, the Netanyahu government may (or may not) have collapsed—a collapse certainly urged on by secular Jews both in Israel and here in the United States (remember Sen. Chuck Schumer’s famed Mar. 14 Senate speech calling for new elections in Israel?).

In the weeks and months before the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, huge numbers of Israeli Army reservists and their friends, families, and supporters staged protests over the Netanyahu government’s attempt to bow to the ultra-Orthodox and remake Israel’s Supreme Court as part of an effort to change Israeli society to ultra-Orthodox standards.

At least 500 of those reservists and active-duty soldiers have died in combat so far as of this writing, not including those massacred on Oct. 7. Not one of these deaths has come from the ultra-Orthodox community as far as I can tell from media reports.

As the Times noted Mar. 30:

“The standoff reflects how a decades-long battle over the character and future of the Jewish state has become graver since Oct. 7. Secular Israelis have long clashed with the ultra-Orthodox minority, known in Hebrew as Haredim, about how religious the state should be and how much autonomy the Haredim should have.

Now, a growing number of soldiers, including those from religious backgrounds, are returning from the front lines in Gaza and questioning why they should be risking their lives for a minority that receives vast educational subsidies, contributes less to the economy than other parts of society and mostly does not serve in the military.”

Facing up to the challenge
of the ultra-Orthodox at home

In our area, we might ask: where are the supporters of the human rights of women in the ultra-Orthodox community?

Let alone, as I have written in past columns, where is the outrage over ultra-Orthodox yeshivas, funded with New York taxpayer money, turning out students who cannot read or write English, do math, or have the basic skills to function in a first world 21st century society?

Could it be that the full frontal attacks on the Times for reporting these outrages (by ultra-Orthodox groups even buying anti New York Times billboards in Times Square—see my column and photo from Jan. 12, 2023 at westmorenews.com) have prompted other media outlets into silence on these issues?

Have you seen or heard any outraged elected officials denouncing the use of taxpayer funds for these schools?

Have you seen any elected women officials coming to the aid of the women protesting conditions in Kiryas Joel?

The American Jewish community, like Jewish communities in Europe and other parts of the world, is dealing with a horrific outbreak of antisemitism—from college campuses to the streets of American cities, towns, and villages. All in the aftermath of the Hamas invasion and Israel’s response.

But that should not stop secular American Jews, like secular Jewish Israelis, from demanding change in the way the ultra-Orthodox not only treat their own members but try to impose their standards on other Jews.

Dick Hubert, a retired television news producer-writer-reporter living in Rye Brook, has been honored with the Peabody Award, the DuPont Columbia Award and the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Journalism Award.

Editor’s Note: This column, written by Dick Hubert, represents his opinion and not that of this newspaper.