to: ‘The Haredim can leave whenever they want. Nobody is holding them hostage. Just make sure the door doesn’t hit them on the way out. “
1. The Hareidim were there first. Before the zionists. Before the Arabs. Before the Greeks and Romans.Being a bunch of religious fanatics with weird ideas on halacha, we were chased out of what is now Iraq about 4000 years ago.
2.What is the basis of the zionist claim to Eretz Yisrael?. Zionists have lived in Israel for barely over a century. Compare that to the Americans who have been in their land for 400 years, or the English who arrived 1500 years ago, or the Palestinians who arrived 1400 years if you ignore the DNA evidence that they aren’t really Arabs and are a mixture of Jewish hilonim (a.k.a. mityavanim), Greek and Romans. Based on DNA, most Jews are only partly over middle eastern ancestry, and that’s concentrated on the male line – there were apparently many more female converts in ancient times but they were convereted based on good old fashioned hareidi halachas. As of the 19th century, very few Jews spoke Hebrew except for hareidi fanatics who learned in Hebrew, rather than Latin or Arabic as did normal westerners. Except for a few hareidim, few Jews wanted to live in Israel (and it wasn’t the Arabs who kept us away, if fact they welcomed Jews back when the defeated the Romans – probably figured anyone who hates Romans can’t be all bad).